


Terror Comes in Twos (demon!shane fanfic, temp. name)

by shady_kic



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Demon!Shane, bfu, buzzfeed unsolved - Freeform, d!s, ryan bergara - Freeform, shane medej
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:21:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 24,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21854407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shady_kic/pseuds/shady_kic
Summary: demon!shane lets gowe did it !! I'm finally done ! I had to do a bunch of edits and it took me like 5 hours so I hope it works ;)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 38





	1. Coffee + Cogitation

It’s about three in the afternoon and it’s raining torrentially. My half-brother Jack sits on one of the two couches in my dorm (which, for the record, happens to be his bed on the days that my roommate isn’t traveling with her missions group; he told me he hates his apartment, but never why he does), his nose in a book while I sit at my desk doing research on what old, decrepit building we should explore next. We hadn’t been to one for close to a year now and we were both itching for a new adventure. I’m scrolling through the Google results for ‘haunted places near here’, which, in retrospect, sounds like it would turn up some pretty dumb results (and it did, but my evasion skills are amazing), when I come across something strange. Upon a glance, it looks like a research article, and out of curiosity, I open it. It’s dated November twelfth of 2026, which was around two months ago, and it was authored by a local historian. Scrolling through it, I find that it describes the desertion of several specific historical attractions over the last eight months or so. A bit further down the article, things start to get weirder.

“Hey, Jack,” I say to the bookworm who’s commandeered my couch, “Come look at this.” 

With a drowsy “mmkay”, he slowly and gingerly gets up and ambles over to the table so I can show him my findings.

“So, you know how I’m trying to find another place to investigate, right?” I ask, looking over my shoulder at him.

“Yeah, you told me,” he responds. 

“Well, I was scrolling through some Google results and found this article about the strange happenings of several of these attractions being...abandoned.”

“Okay?” Jack doesn’t seem very interested. 

“But here’s the thing. No one knows why they were abandoned. It’s like someone just came in and condemned them all with no probable cause.” 

Frowning, Jack squints at the screen over my shoulder and says, “Huh. That _is_ weird.” 

I silently read a little further and point out something else. 

“It says here that most of them had at some point been looked into by paranormal investigators, all of whom said, directly or indirectly, that they’d rather go to hell than go back to any of those places.” 

“Okay, but why is that strange? I’m betting that most, or at least some of those buildings are pretty old, and they’re probably just becoming unsafe to walk around in anymore.” 

“These places—all of them—are hotspots for paranormal investigators and tourists alike. It seems pretty off that all of the sudden they’d just say ‘fuck it’ for one of them and never go back.” 

“You make a compelling case.” I can feel Jack becoming more and more interested by the second. “Is there a list of these places?”

“Um…”

I scroll down a bit more and sure enough, there is a list of sites that had all been a part of this strange abandonment. 

“Yeah...the last one to go, at least so far, was condemned about a week ago...But it’s not a historical point of interest.”

“What is it, then?” 

I take a long pause, trying to process my thoughts. 

“It’s an office building in LA that, before it was condemned, was used as the headquarters for BuzzFeed.” 

“BuzzFeed? What the hell does BuzzFeed have to do with any of this? And why was its headquarters the location that broke the pattern?”

“That’s just it; I have no idea.” 

I turn to look over my shoulder at Jack.

“I think it’s worth investigating ourselves.” 

Jack grins back down at me and says, “I like what you’re thinking, and I’m totally down.” 

“Sweet!” I say somewhat excitedly. “We can drive down tomorrow night.”

“Sounds like a plan, Jay,” Jack says. 

He hits the back of my chair twice before returning to the couch and his book. I stand up and stretch a bit before turning to him. 

“I know you just sat down, but I’m getting a little hungry. You wanna head down to the Seventh Heaven for a snack?” 

He immediately closes his book (without marking the page, may I add) and jumps to his feet. 

“Screw sitting, I’ll go anywhere for food,” he says enthusiastically. 

I throw a black leather jacket on over my hoodie and Jack throws on his brown one, and we head out the door and down the street to the cozy little coffee shop. 

The familiar sound of a tiny bell tinkling as I push the door open floods my mind with a sense of comfort and warmth, and the soft glow of the rustic-looking lamps seems to instantly rid my body of the frigid air I’d just stepped out of. 

Going up to the counter, I order a cinnamon roll that Jack forces me to share with him, and we both order black coffee, apparently seeing the fact that I’d be up into the darkest hours of the night researching the BuzzFeed place (Jack told me that he’d probably be kept up by my typing anyway, so better to just be kept awake by caffeine than be a miserable, sleep-deprived monster in the morning). We sit across from each other at a corner table, taking small sips of coffee and bites of _my_ cinnamon roll every now and then until I finally break the silence. 

“I found something online about the BuzzFeed building earlier that I decided not to mention ‘cause I figured there could be some serious discussion about it.” 

“Well?” Jack says. “Spit it out.” 

“Before I called you over to check the article out, I actually went down to the bottom of it, looking for the list of places that had been a victim of this weird desertion thing and ended up finding a bunch of stuff out about the BuzzFeed building. I found out that BuzzFeed, in and of itself, not only houses a website, but also several shows on YouTube. I scrolled through the names of most of them, but the one that struck me the most was _BuzzFeed: Unsolved_. I did a little more digging and found out the two guys that host it are named Ryan and Shane. They—” 

“Wait,” Jack interrupts me. “Shane?” 

“Yeah...?”

“And Ryan?”

“Yeah…….why?” 

“What are their last names?”

“Well, I don’t know how to pronounce Shane’s, but it’s spelled M-A-D-E-J, and Ryan’s is Bergara.”

“Them?” Jack sounds surprised. 

“Sure,” I say, probably just about as confused as he is. 

“They have another BuzzFeed show on YouTube that I watch sometimes when I’m bored. It’s called _Ruining History._ ”

Another short silence and Jack briefly dons a weird grin.“There’s a demon AU for Shane on Pinterest.”

His words snap me back into reality and an inevitable laugh forces itself out of my mouth. 

“Wait, hold the phone,” I say through my shit-brain’s way of expressing surprise. “First of all, you have Pinterest?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong with that?” Jack says, turning to look at me with a playfully irritated expression. 

“There’s nothing wrong with you having a Pinterest, you just don’t strike me as a Pinterest kind of guy.” 

“Well, you learn new things every day,” Jack retaliated whilst donning the smile of a proud little shit. 

“Second, did you say demon AU?” 

“Yeah. I was thinking that maybe, in all of its _glorious_ irrationality, that it has something to do with why the BuzzFeed building was left to collect dust,” he says, his expression having returned to its normal neutrality. 

I give him a wide smile. 

“That’s the most useful thing you’ve said all day.” 

He just beams childishly and with that, we head back to my dorm, coffee in hand. Both of us immediately return to what we were doing prior to our coffee/snack run: Jack reading his book and me typing up notes and scrolling through Google results, effectively putting our theory into play. My occupation remains steady for the next six hours or so, save for bathroom and snack breaks (when I get started on something, I HAVE to finish it; it’s really an issue), while Jack, within ten minutes of returning to the dorm, decides that he’s tired of reading and ends up spending the next five hours and fifty minutes doing homework, mulling over Antichamber, scrolling through Twitter of all places and pacing the room both in peaceful contemplation and frustrated mental disagreement. Finally, at around ten p.m., Jack interrupts my work. 

“I’m gonna try to get some sleep so if you could wrap that up in the next ten minutes or so, that would be fuckin’ stellar.” 

Apparently, despite three cups of coffee, he still couldn’t keep himself awake. 

But then again, neither can I. 

I respond to his request with a huge yawn, and surprisingly, he takes it as an answer and situates himself on his couch. I skim over my work a few minutes later and log out of my computer before getting up to stretch and relocate to my couch. I turn to notify Jack of my retirement but find that he’s already dead asleep. I merely scoff at the sight of the most up-and-at-’em person I know sleeping so soundly and shuffle tiredly towards my couch. I’m so tired from typing and straining my eyes that I don’t even bother to take my jacket off, I just collapse onto the couch with a blanket and immediately fall into a light sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Ajay's majoring in English and Jack's double majoring in psychology and some kind of history (ex: American history, European history, etc)
> 
> 2) I know what typical dorms look like and they aren’t very big, which bugs me, so here I decided to modify them a little (it’s 2026 wtf do u want from me). For starters, the actual rooms are bigger (but not by too much) and there are relatively comfy pullouts instead of beds (cuz the beds a fuckin uncomfortable; also code word relatively). However, the pullouts work equally nicely whether pulled out or not, it just depends on the person. Another thing is that there is a small kitchenette in each dorm in this specific complex, even though there is still a dining hall (most likely for students who are too busy to walk there and get food). Because the college is such a small one, this complex is the only one of its kind on campus, and it’s semi-experimental and “co-ed” like the others at the college.  
> One more thing: the campus, all in all, isn't huge, but the buildings are kinda spread apart (all of this shit was inspired by doing an overnight thing at a college)
> 
> 3) When Ajay gets cut off while talking about her research on BuzzFeed (when she mentions Ryan and Shane's names), she _was_ going to mention something about WeAreWatcher (all I know abt it is what I've seen on Instagram so feel free to correct me). She watches _that_ show but not any of the other ones.
> 
> 4) When Jack connects the dots between the demon AU and the BuzzFeed building being abandoned, he was kinda kidding, given he's a skeptic like Shane


	2. Spain + Scrutiny

I awaken hazily to a dull brightness filling the room and see a faint light shining through the window. I can hear Jack snoring softly from his position on the other couch, and I reach over and feel around on the little nightstand for my phone. I find it and grasp it, turning the screen toward my face so I can check the time. The screen flashes on, blinding me until I can find out how to turn the brightness down in my drowsy state. The lock screen, blurred by my bleary eyes, shows me the time seven-thirty. 

“Hey, Jack,” I say in slurred, unclear speech, but he doesn’t even stir. 

“Jack!” Again, no results.

“Goddammit,” I grumble. 

I slowly lift myself into a sitting position and swing my feet to the floor. I gingerly get up and stretch, long and hard, before shuffling over to the couch where Jack lies, practically swaddled in his blanket, and grabbing a corner of the excessively fluffy fabric with both hands. Then, on a mental count of three, I yank the blanket as hard as I can, and both Jack and the blanket come crashing to the floor with a loud _THUD_ that almost certifiably wakes up everyone in my dorm complex. Confused and shaken, Jack sits up and looks around a bit, surprised by this rude awakening. 

“Ow, what the hell?!” he says drowsily. 

He looks up and sees me standing over him and says, “Ajay, what the hell is wrong with you?!” 

I emit a little sniff of amusement. 

“You wouldn’t wake up when I yelled your name, so I had to take drastic action,” I say in a tone that’s only slightly less slurred than before.

“I fucking hate you,” he growls, getting carefully to his feet. 

I yawn and try to wipe the sleep out of my eyes, and proceed to trudge into the small “kitchen” in search of something to eat. I go and open the fridge, but only end up standing there until it starts screaming at me to shut it, thus retreating to the cabinets next to it. I find a half-empty box of Cheerios almost right away and decide to munch on those. So a few seconds later, I find myself back on the couch with a bowl of them, staring into space, which is actually a pretty weird place to be. 

After stretching out, Jack goes over to his backpack, which he had neatly set up against the wall by the door the night before, and takes out his own computer. I watch from my peripheral vision as he sets it down on the kitchen table and slumps into a chair in front of it. Without turning to look at him, I say, “Doing some research for me, are you?” 

“Nah,” he responds, also without even casting a glance in my general direction, “I have a research paper due in a few days and I wanna get it done before we head down to the BuzzFeed building tonight.” 

“Fair enough.” 

I inhale my Cheerios and stare down into the bowl again for a few seconds before getting up to put it in the “kitchen”, where I also remove my jacket. 

“How’d you even sleep in that?” Jack asks me, and I catch him glance up for a half-second. 

“Writing wipes me out big-time. I guess I was too tired to even _think_ about taking it off,” I explain. 

Jack nods slowly. 

“That’s pretty metal, considering the fact that leather is pretty damn uncomfortable, period,” he says. 

“Well, to quote an old friend,” I say, “you learn something new every day.” 

Jack snorts in amusement, and I grin. I head back over to the nightstand, where my phone still sits. 

It’s eight a.m. on the dot, on a Thursday may I add, which means I should probably head to my history class. 

“I gotta head out for class,” I tell Jack, putting my jacket on again (I really don’t understand why I took it off in the first place) and throwing my computer into its bag before heading out the door. As I go, I yell back into the singly-occupied dorm, “Don’t tear the place up!” 

I can almost feel Jack rolling his eyes. 

It’s still raining pretty hard, so I flip my hood up and shove my hands into my pockets, trying to avoid getting completely soaked. I quickly duck into Witt Hall, where my class is, and head through the third door on the left of the long entrance hallway. I throw a quick smile and my professor and find a seat in the back corner of the classroom, my usual post. Soon, the other students take their seats as well and the class begins at eight-fifteen. 

The majority of this particular session is about the Spanish armada, a topic that I really couldn’t care less about (I don’t care how important it was to history, we live in America and therefore I’m not interested in European history, not to mention, I learned about this in SIXTH GRADE), so I just begin doodling inconspicuously. But at one point, the BuzzFeed building, which had been fighting its way to the front of my mind, finally made a subtle appearance. 

_Why would a normal office building end up on someone’s hit list?_ I think to myself. _It just seems too strange to be realistic._

And to top it all off, I practically leap out of my seat when class is dismissed and (almost forgetting my computer) fly out the door. I dash out of the building and back to my dorm, where I find everything still in order and Jack sitting at the kitchen table, now scrolling through Pinterest, to my amusement. 

“Don’t you have a paper due?” I say. 

“Yeah, but I got bored,” he said back which prompted a major eye roll from yours truly. 

“I see you didn’t destroy my place. Does that mean I’ve finally made it off of your grudge list?” 

He sets his phone face-down on the table and looks up at me. 

“It seems you have for now, but don’t get too comfortable. I’ll find something to be mad at you for sooner or later,” he says with a coy grin. 

“Mm-hm,” I say, wincing mentally at the truth in his statement. 

I change the subject to avoid too much thought on his part. 

“I was thinking about the BuzzFeed building today in class and had a thought worth bringing up to you.” 

“Hit me with it,” Jack says, rubbing his hands together vigorously. 

“Why would someone put a normal office building on their hit list? It just doesn’t make any sense.” 

I set my stuff down on the tiny kitchen island and seat myself on my couch. 

“Unless someone really has something against BuzzFeed, I’m coming up blank,” Jack says. “But it’s a question that can probably be answered when we head down there tonight.” 

He slams his hands down on the table, making me jump, before saying, “Speaking of which, what time do you want to head out for LA?” 

“Well, it takes about four and a half hours to get there so maybe five-thirty-ish?” I suggest, “That way it should be long dark by the time we get there.” 

Jack nods. 

“That sounds decent.” 

“And we can actually leave for the building around twelve so nobody’s around, ‘cause I would assume they have the place pretty well fenced-off. But getting there as early as that would also give us time to get dinner and look around a little.” 

“I like sightseeing.” 

After a short pause, he comments, a little late, “Going at midnight, huh? Sounds thrilling.” 

“That’s kinda the point,” I reply. 

“Bold, Ajay, bold,” he mutters slyly, probably thinking I can’t hear him. 

I stare down into space for a while, thinking about what’s to come and eventually speak up again. 

“Mind if I walk around campus for a bit?” 

“Go ahead,” Jack approves, “I still have quite a bit of my paper left to write, so a little peace and quiet wouldn’t hurt.” 

“Thanks, J. You’re the best.” 

“I know.” 

I dig around in my computer bag for my earbuds and upon finding them, shove them into my jacket pocket and walk out the door, muttering, “You cocky motherfucker.” 

Jack, to my momentary surprise, heard me, as he loudly retorted, “I heard that!” as I shut the door behind me. 

I take out my earbuds and put them in as I stroll down the third-floor hallway of my dorm complex, and I let a little LoFi wash away any doubt I have about tonight.   
—————  
I return from my little stroll about two and a half hours later, and begin, once again, to search madly for any piece of information on the BuzzFeed building that I could’ve passed over whilst digging the first two times I did research, which was hardly likely at this point because, in total, I had done seven hours of mostly unnecessary research; I really just need to pass time until we leave for LA. However, I only end up spending a half-hour researching before turning up no new information and giving up. So I decide to pull a “Jack” and read for a while. He approves of my new little phrase, and I ask him for book recommendations, to which he responds by reaching into his backpack and producing two of the thickest books I’ve ever seen. When he sees the wonderment written all over my face, he just grins at me smugly and says, “Good luck.” 

I huff irritatedly at him and bring the two massive works of literature over to the coffee table. I sit down on my couch and begin to read one, only to have become completely hooked a few minutes later. Before I know it, it’s four in the afternoon and I realize that if we’re going to be checking out the BuzzFeed really late at night, we’ll probably end up being pretty tired afterward, therefore finding a hotel to stay in wouldn’t be a bad idea. I quickly consult Jack, but instead of agreeing with me, he brings up an alternate solution. 

“You know,” he says, “my aunt has an apartment in LA that she comes down to in the fall and I bet she’d be willing to let us stay there while we’re in the city. I can ask her   
about it.” 

“Are you sure she’d let us stay there? What if something happened? I’m really not sure about it,” I respond skeptically. 

Jack smiles. 

“Of course she would since she’s not living there right now. Besides, it’d be nice if someone went to check on the old place,” he insists. 

“Alright, then, I guess,” I say after a moment of contemplation.

“Sweet!” Jack says, almost excitedly, “I’ll call her now.” 

He goes over into the kitchen to make the call and I eavesdrop on the entire conversation attentively; but to my disappointment, not much more was talked about other than the topic of interest. After hanging up, Jack gives me a thumbs up and returns to the kitchen table to do God-knows-what, while I go back to being completely enticed by the book he lent me. 

Our occupations both remain constant for the next two and a half hours and at around six-thirty, I get up to pack a few things for the trip: flashlights and extra batteries for exploring the BuzzFeed building, clothes and stuff for Jack’s aunt’s place, and stuff to do in the car when I’m not driving. I advise Jack to do the same and we agree to meet up at seven at his apartment. After he leaves, I pack my stuff into the backseat of my black Silverado and do a little bit of homework before heading over to Jack’s, as I still have five or six minutes to kill. I wait in the parking lot of his apartment complex for a few minutes before texting him to “get his ass down here before I come up there”. That seems to do the trick because he comes running out seconds later with his own stuff. He throws it into the backseat with mine and swings himself into the passenger side of the truck. I give him a slightly irritated side-eye and he responds by glaring daggers at me. 

“I had to _lie_ to Derek about where we’re going so I don’t need any of that shit from you,” he says (Derek is his nitpicky neighbor who’s always up in his shit, though he’s an okay guy). 

“Why is that a big deal?” I question. “You don’t even like Derek all that much.” 

“He’s still nice to me! I’m not gonna be mean to him if he’s nice to me!” Jack hisses like he thinks Derek himself is listening. 

“Okay, okay, chill,” I say, and before pulling out of the parking lot, I ask him if he’d be willing to drive the second half of the trip. 

He hesitates but says yes and within a few minutes, we’re speeding down the highway towards LA.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Ajay's told Jack not to fall asleep around her before, he just decided not to listen
> 
> 2) So when Jack tells Ajay that he "has a research paper due in a few days and wants to get it done before they head down to the Buzzfeed building," he was referencing some future homework he'd asked his professor for (tho this isn't really relevant), and his excuse to his professor wasn't "oh me and my sister are going ghost hunting," it was "I'm going to a funeral" 
> 
> 3) When Ajay tells Jack "You learn new things every day," she's basically talking about how you can find out new things about yourself every day (in this instance, she can fall asleep very easily, despite certain aspects that might make falling asleep difficult, i.e. wearing a leather jacket)
> 
> 4) U know shit's about to go down when someone sets their phone face-down on the table
> 
> 5)


	3. Heathens + Horror

Thirty minutes into the trip, Jack is already complaining that he’s hungry and his complaints almost drive me off the road as I’m telling him to shut up. But nevertheless, he persists and I finally just give up and stop to get him food. I’m not all that hungry, but his food smells really good, so I ask for a single french fry, to which he says no without hesitation and that I should’ve gotten food if I was hungry. 

After that, I decide to just keep my mouth shut and my eyes on the road so I don’t crash the car and kill us both, though with Jack in the car, my conscience wants to make me do that willingly. Soon, however, he quiets down too and settles to looking out the window and listening to music through a single earbud. There is a strangely tense fifteen-minute silence before I finally say, “Are we sure this is a good idea, Jack?” 

“Is what a good idea?” he says, turning his head just far enough in my direction that he can see me in his peripheral vision.

“Going to this building,” I clarify, “I mean, it was condemned for a reason, and we can’t be anywhere close to sure that that reason was a good one.” 

“That’s true, but why worry? The building should be in decent shape; it looked like it had a fairly recent architectural style in the pictures you showed me.” 

“Jack, you’re completely missing the point,” I insist, “that’s exactly why I’m nervous. That building looked too modern to have been abandoned without a pretty damn bad cause, and I’m just not sure I want to find out what that cause was.” 

“You make yet another valid point,” Jack agrees, “but we’re both adequately armed with as much information as the internet is willing to give us on the building and even BuzzFeed itself _and_ flashlights.” 

I give his words some thought and say, “Okay, I guess it’ll be okay.” 

Once I finish my end of the dialogue, we pass the halfway mark and I immediately pull the car over to let Jack hop into the driver’s seat. But as soon as we get going again, worry starts to work its way back into my mind and Jack seems to sense it. 

“Hey,” he says, “If we just stick together, everything will be fine.” 

I let out a long muffled sigh and say, “I guess you’re right. There’s really nothing to be worried about. Ghosts aren’t real anyway.” 

But a small sense of doubt lingers fairly harmlessly in the back of my mind until Jack pulls into the parking lot of his aunt’s apartment complex. 

By the time we get up into the actual apartment, it’s about nine p.m. so we decide to go walk around LA for a while. After all, we have three hours to kill. After putting our stuff down, we head back down to the truck and drive into the city, looking for good places to stop. We drive slowly around the busy streets for quite a while and, having decided to check things out previously, park and walk around a bit. With all of the street lamps and traffic lights, this inner-city area almost seems warmer than the area around our residence. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt during a California winter and it’s pleasantly comforting, considering the ever-present worry in my mind. Suddenly, I come to a strangely late realization that I haven’t eaten since before I went to class this morning and I suggest to Jack that we should probably find a place to eat, preferably sit-down because we have so much time on our hands. I spot a small diner-style restaurant and steer myself and Jack toward it. It’s a pretty cute little place with lots of good-looking food on the menu, but Jack starts complaining about how he’s already eaten and isn’t that hungry, so, despite how hungry I am, I agree on just ordering an appetizer. We down it, and the slowed-down passage of time is filled with talk about our classes and jobs, but of course, the inevitable topic of BuzzFeed makes its way in there. 

“You know,” I say to Jack, “I thought of something while researching that I didn’t really think was all that important until now. This place was a pretty huge deal before it was deserted. I don’t really know if you know much about it other than the shows, but along with shows like _Unsolved_ and _Ruining History,_ there was a website with a wide range of things, from daily news to personality quizzes.” 

Jack looks surprised. 

“That sounds like a shit ton,” he says. 

“Yeah, it’s too bad they had to condemn the headquarters, of all places. It sounds like it was quite the internet hotspot.”

Once we finish our food, Jack (yes, Jack) pays and we head out. We look around a little more before walking back in the direction of the car. I tell Jack he can drive back to the apartment because I drove here, and on the way back to the apartment, I say, “Well, I can check LA off my bucket list now.” 

“What?” Jack looks at me for a second before laying his eyes back on the road, “You’ve never been to LA?” 

“Yeah,” I sigh, “My mom always said she’d take me there if she could but she just wasn’t able to make enough money to do a trip before she left.” 

“Dad brought me here at least three times before he died,” Jack says. “I was really little then, but I still remember it clear as day.” 

“Dad sounds like he was the best ever.” 

“He really was.” 

The conversation simply ends there without cause and we sit in silence the rest of the way back. We get back to the apartment near eleven-thirty and get ready to go to the BuzzFeed building. Both of us throw on our signature leather jackets and put flashlights and extra batteries into the pockets, and I wear a beanie for good measure. 

It’s long past dark, so once we’re ready, we gather our wits and leave the apartment for the headquarters. It’s only a few blocks away from the apartment, and we agree on walking over there. It’s pretty chilly outside, seeing that it’s the middle of winter, but as usual, I’m wearing a hoodie under my jacket and Jack just preferred to be a tad cold over being stuck under two sweltering articles of clothing. 

The building looks to be much bigger and more foreboding than the internet had suggested and a shiver runs down my spine. We both stop at the entrance to the intimidating razor wire fence surrounding the perimeter of the building and, using flashlights, do an external scan of what we’re about to walk into. Right as we’re about to walk through the slightly agape fence, I get the overwhelming feeling that someone is watching me and whip around suddenly, startling Jack. But, confirming my suspicions, there’s someone in a black hoodie watching us from across the street. It’s too dark to see their face, but they look to be about five-ten and the way they’re standing has an almost submissive nature to it. I turn to notify Jack, but by the time I look back across the street, the person is gone. 

“Maybe it was just your imagination?” Jack suggests, and I agree, shrugging it off. 

We stand and observe the exterior for another few moments, having been thrown back by my strange sighting, before turning to look at each other. 

“Well,” Jack says, “Shall we?” 

I sigh, long and deep, before saying, “We shall.” 

Jack motions toward the fence with a smooth gesture of his hand. “After you.” 

This prompts me to slide through the slightly cracked fence, and he follows. I gotta be honest, slipping through that massive razor wire fence that displayed a huge _DANGER: DO NOT ENTER_ sign really makes me feel like a bit of a heathen. 

We slowly make our way towards the entrance of the building, only to reach the doors and find that the handles have a huge chain wrapped around them at least ten times, if not more, with an equally striking padlock holding it in place, locking anyone who dared get past the fence out. I start thinking of ways that we can get it off without leaving a trace, but Jack has other plans. Within the minute, he begins battering the padlock with the butt of his flashlight, which proves to be very indiscreetly effective; the lock clatters to the ground, bent beyond repair after three or four heavy blows. I then help him unravel the chain from around the handles and soon enough, we were in. 

The first thing we see upon entering was a huge ten-by-six panel of glass that has _BUZZFEED L.A. HEADQUARTERS_ printed on it in red, like a final warning of what we’re getting ourselves into. 

We keep moving diligently through the maze of long hallways and corridors (and at one point two flights of stairs), each of which is lined with doors leading into separate offices and maintenance offices. The whole building is covered in a thin layer of dust that riles up my allergies like crazy and in no time at all, I’m struggling to contain the onslaught of sneezes that was its effect. Suddenly at the end of one of my sneezing spells, we hear a loud _BANG_ at the end of the hallway we’re in, as though someone had violently overturned or thrown some large metal object, that makes both of us jump. Jack very cautiously leads me down the hall toward the source of the noise to investigate and when we reach it, we find that it leads up two sets of stairs and into a very largely open, low-ceilinged room that looks like it could have once been a communal workplace; and it has huge red letters spelling out “BuzzFeed” printed, mural-size, on the north-facing wall. It looks pretty much like what I’d seen in pictures online while doing research except for the fact that it looks like a hurricane had run rampant through it. 

There are swivel chairs and computer monitors scattered all across the floor, broken and laying on their sides, and, alongside multiple cubicle walls, there are huge metal tables, several of which are overturned. 

I could’ve sworn they’d been thrown across the room. 

“This has to be where that noise came from!” I whisper to Jack, who nods in agreement. 

He gives me the S.W.A.T. signal to split up (it seems as though he’s gone into commando mode), which I somehow understand and obey. I start heading toward the middle of the room while Jack goes around the edge. I move glacially slowly, heel-toeing it closer and closer to the center of the room, beginning to shake a little. I recurrently glance over my shoulder to make sure there’s no one behind me, a feeling that was ever-present in this place. At one point I shine my flashlight on one of the tables and notice that the thin coat of dust that should’ve been covering it was no longer there. The table is lying on its side with its top facing away from me, so I venture around front, and what I see on the tabletop immediately brands itself onto my brain and I shudder violently. On that goddamned metal surface are painted the words, in a deep, bloody red, _SO LONG, BOYS._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) By “condemned for a good reason”, I mean something like it was dangerous to be in because of faulty construction or some system like electric or water was broken so badly that it was too risky to fix. A bad reason could mean something like bad neighborhood (like Lake Street bad), or continual cyber (attacks) or sabotage issues (I wrote this note a while ago so sry if it doesn't make any diddly-damn sense)
> 
> 2) Ajay’s kind of a partial skeptic like me, not believing in ghosts or any shit like that but believing that there’s something in the dark that can’t be explained
> 
> 3) Okay so here’s the dealio: the reason I’m referring to her as Jack’s aunt is because she was his mom’s sister, which would make her completely unrelated to Ajay.
> 
> 4) I would rather be slightly cold then sweltering hot (disagree with me I dare you)


	4. Extricators + Evil (temp. name)

It takes a shitload of energy and both of my hands clamped over my mouth not to make a sound when I see those words. 

_Blood. It’s blood. Someone was KILLED and another someone used their blood to write this,_ my mind rambles at me. 

I make completely sure I’m not going to subconsciously gasp when I take my hands off of my mouth and then call Jack over. I don’t want to turn around, but I can hear his hustled footsteps make their way around the wrecked tables and chairs. I feel him rush up behind me and sense that he’s starting to get a little bit scared. 

“Who wrote this?” He whispers to me. “And _why?_ ” 

“I have absolutely no idea,” I respond. 

As if responding to his questions, there’s a low growl, a sound almost beyond the range of human hearing, and in a flash, I’m on my feet, trembling. Jack comes up next to me, and I can feel that he’s shaking too. 

“Who the hell is there?” he says, demanding the darkness to give up its unseen resident. 

I suddenly hear several swift but heavy footsteps flying around the edge of the room and once they stop, I whirl around and see an incredibly tall silhouette standing in the doorway that we’d walked into. I shine my flashlight on whoever’s there (and I’m _positive_ that there was someone there), but they’re gone. Just gone. I didn’t see them disappear, they just vanished. I figure that maybe it’s just someone trying to scare us, and that they’ve slipped around the corner outside the door, and that they’re expecting us to follow. So, wanting to scare them back, I motion to Jack and we go to investigate. But as I swing around the corner, I discover that there’s nobody there. Now I’ve always been a cynic, never really believing in the existence of any sort of ghost or demon, but this was starting to become borderline unexplainable. I stare in disbelief down the dark hallway that I swear on my life I saw someone standing in and wallow in the mystery of it. Jack forces a shrug and somehow gets himself to say, “Maybe it was just your eyes playing tricks on you.”

I turn to face him, irritated. 

“Okay, first of all, stop being such a tough guy, I know you’re just as freaked out as I am,” I say, “and second, you didn’t see what I saw and therefore, have no right to shoot me down.” 

Typical cynic versus skeptic shit.

“Now you’re coming with me to look into this or, so help me, I will leave you here alone.”

I turn to take in Jack’s expression but all I see are placid eyes and an overall passive face. 

His nonchalant manner _infuriates_ me. 

We creep down the hallway as silently as possible with me in the lead this time, and when I get about halfway down the dark corridor, I catch a glimpse of something lingering at the end. I strain my eyes, trying to make out what it is, but to no avail, so I shine my flashlight down there and when I see what it is, I gasp and stumble backward a few steps, tripping and falling into Jack. 

“What? What is it?” He says, guiding me back to my feet. 

But I don’t even have to do anything, as my eyes are glued to the vision of horror standing so calmly and yet so terrifyingly at the end of the hall, for him to have the same reaction. So here we are, both standing half a hallway’s length away from something whose existence shouldn’t even be possible, terrified of what comes next. Suddenly, the silhouetted figure begins a somewhat quick stride toward us, and, having to force ourselves to unfreeze, we run. It doesn’t matter where we end up in the moment, we just run. 

I’m running faster than Jack, but his pace is more controlled, so as we’re descending the stairs, I trip and fall down them, smashing my face into the steps on two separate occasions. Pain tears through the entirety of my head and once the accidental thrill ride comes to an end, I lie at the bottom, swearing under my breath. I can hear Jack hasten his descent as much as he can, probably hoping to get to me before the other thing does. He stage-whispers my name twice as he gets halfway down the set of stairs I tumbled down and he _does_ get to me first, which is a relief. 

“Hey,” he says, kneeling down beside me, “are you okay?” 

I lift my head from where I had tucked it protectively into my chest, revealing two huge, profusely bleeding gashes: one is slightly above my right eyebrow and the other on my left cheekbone. 

“No,” I say half-subconsciously. 

“Well I can see that _now,_ ” Jack says. 

I take a few seconds to regain my bearings and say, “We have to get out of here before whatever I saw comes back. There’s no telling what it’ll—” 

I’m cut short by terror when I suddenly see the epitome of all of my current fears slide completely silently down the stairs behind Jack. It gets so close that I can see that it, or rather, he, is human and am able to make out all of his defining features. He looks to be about thirty-five years old and he’s _tall_ —six-three or four to put a guess out there. He does look to be fully human, ragged though he is, but there’s something wrong with his eyes—they’re solid black. 

“Jack,” I whisper, “if you value your confident little antics, you’ll listen to me when I tell you not to turn the hell around.” 

He immediately freezes solid and turns his head a little to the side. Upon a side-eyed glance, his face turns a ghostly white. He’s clearly too scared to move and when I see black claws form on one of the “man’s” hands, I am as well. But just as he raises his clawed hand back to take a swipe, I snap back to reality and pull Jack to the ground next to me by the collar of his jacket. Though I was able to save him from being severely shredded, the tips of the thing’s (for lack of knowledge of what the hell he is) claws catch on the back of his shoulder and tear through the thick leather like an oar through water, lightly grazing his skin. He throws out a surprised, “Shit!” but seems otherwise undaunted and is on his feet in seconds, practically dragging me through the stairwell door and down yet another long hallway. 

We fall into step next to each other, making damn sure the other doesn’t get left behind. Upon seeing the huge glass panel that screams “ _BUZZFEED,_ " we both run out the door faster than we ever have before in one last burst of terrified energy. 

We explode out the razor-wire fence and once we’re out, we just keep running until we reach Jack’s aunt’s apartment complex and hustle up the stairs to the seventh floor. 

We’re just so desperate to reach any other atmosphere than the one within the BuzzFeed building that Jack goes to open the door, he only turns the knob halfway and slams into the door so hard that he breaks the entire inner frame off of the wall. We both take a few rushed steps into the apartment and fall into whatever piece of remotely comfortable furniture our paths lead us to. By the time we so hurriedly get back to the apartment, it’s about two or three in the morning, and we just lay there—me on the main part of the sectional and Jack on the chez—for hours, or so it seems. When we do eventually come back to our senses, I’m still shaking a little bit and so is Jack, but we figure that it’s time to start physically recuperating. However, unease hangs in the air like carbon monoxide—untraceable, but dangerously present. 

By the time I’m able to face the unease and get up, there’s blood from the wounds on my face soaking into the fabric of the sectional. Though it takes me a shorter time to push the unease aside, Jack gets up quicker and comes over to me. He briefly assesses my injuries and says, “Do you want some help cleaning your face up? You look like you got hit by a car.” 

“Sure,” I say exhaustedly (but still mentally appreciating his ever-present sense of humor, dry though it is). “Sorry about the couch.” 

“It’s fine, I can deal with it,” he replies reassuringly. 

I sit myself up and settle in as Jack goes digging through the cabinets in the bathroom, looking for medical supplies. He returns with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a few strips of gauze. He wipes the excess blood off of my face before cleaning up the actual wounds, and I wince a little when he touches them. 

“You good?” He asks, pausing his work with a concerned manner. 

“Yeah,” I reply, “it just stings a bit, that’s all.” 

“Just let me know if you want me to stop for a few seconds, okay?” 

“That’s a copy.” 

I only ask him to stop once, though it definitely hurts more than that; but I know he’s trying to be as careful as he can and I don’t want him to feel bad about hurting me. 

Once Jack finishes I lightly brush a finger over each wound to make sure his work would hold up for the next day or so. We give each other mutual thumbs-ups and resume our places on the furniture. 

I gotta be completely honest, having a former med student as a brother is pretty nice. 

A few minutes later, Jack looks over at me from his place on chez and says a bit sarcastically, “So much for being a skeptic, I guess.” 

I give merely a sniff of amusement and suddenly my mind turns a bit dark. Considering what I read on the internet about Shane being a skeptic, I think to myself, _I wonder if that’s something he’s ever able to think about. I mean, if he even can think about things. Maybe it’d be something like “why was I so stupid as to think it was a good idea to taunt demons and ghosts and whatever?” But I guess I wouldn’t really know._

Before we left for LA, I made it a priority to watch as many episodes of _BuzzFeed: Unsolved_ as I could to see what we were getting into. 

_Shane was just the most cavalier person I’d ever seen, even above Jack, and thinking about him possessed by a demon is horrifying,_ I think to myself, _I’m sure no fans of that show could ever imagine that ever actually happening to him._

I’m quickly getting confused by the level of irrelevance my thoughts have risen to, which, unfortunately, is keeping me wide awake, but I turn to Jack, ready to bring said thoughts up to him. I find that he’s fast asleep and, really, I don’t blame him. We’d been up until two in the morning trying with an ulterior motive to prove the existence of something that shouldn't even exist, and on top of almost being shredded to bits by whatever it was, he ended up having to deal with _my_ face because of _my own_ reckless ass. 

I decide to try and get creative to fill the time ‘til Jack wakes up, but the only thing I can come up with is pulling a small knife out of my backpack and fiddling with it (surprisingly, this takes up at least a half-hour). After a while, I try and do a little bit of research centered around demons, partially out of my own interest, but also out of my subconscious’s interest of possibly going back into the BuzzFeed building again. I don’t really turn up anything that I hadn’t learned from TV shows in the past, but upon making comparisons between some of those different theories, I find that this BuzzFeed case is extremely similar to that of the demons in _Supernatural._

“Huh,” I say, to myself, as a sort of half-assed “eureka!” reaction.

I guess the Winchester brothers weren’t as far off about this stuff as any _respectable_ person would think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) K this is a little bit late but I forgot to mention that Ajay is scared of the dark (yeah yeah whatever she's a 20-year-old that's afraid of the dark I'm almost 18 and I will never NOT be afraid of the dark)
> 
> 2) When Jack asks if Ajay is okay after she trips on the stairs and she tells him "no," she says it in kind of a "hmmm take a wild fucking guess" kinda tone
> 
> 3) Just because I have OCD and hate when there's a mess anywhere (and also because I have a sectional in my basement that's essentially the same as the one in this fic, Jack is being sincere when he tells Ajay he can deal with the blood from her face "soaking into the fabric" because the covers are removable and wash machine safe
> 
> 4) When Jack says "So much for being a skeptic," he didn’t really mean it cause neither he nor Ajay really know what to think about the whole thing so far
> 
> 5) This is kinda irrelevant, but it was part of the google comments I had for this chapter: So the demon that's possessing Shane isn't strong enough to constantly keep his mind in a state in which he can't have human thoughts, allowing him to be able to think his own thoughts sometimes, though his body is still under demonic control. For example, this passage here where Ajay is thinking about whether or not he ever thought about the (and we're just gonna say that in a past life Ajay was like me in the sense that she used to be obsessed with demons of all kinds, so she knew, based on the kind of person she made Shane out to be given what she had found on the internet about him and what Jack had told her, that he was most likely stronger than the demon and his mind returned to a human state for short periods of time, though still having the demon possess his body and keep him at the BuzzFeed building) fact that he had been a skeptic
> 
> 6) Ajay's familiar with BuzzFeed, she's just doesn't know what BF:U is
> 
> 7) So we have two running theories as to why/how Shane got possessed: The demon in the Chair Room at the Ohio State Penitentiary  
> and/or the Goatman. The second of these holds more water but irdk


	5. Fear + Foresight (temp. name)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there rly weren't any helpful notes for this one 
> 
> It was mostly just me commenting on my own writing like an idiot

As soon as Jack wakes up, which is around four-thirty in the morning, I present my findings to him very unenthusiastically. He thinks it’s cool, but neither of us really pay any more attention to it. He suggests we go out on the town again, like last night before the BuzzFeed building, and I agree. At this point, we both just want the demon’s creepy black stare out of our minds and so anything is a viable solution, but why not have fun with it, I guess. 

After throwing on weather appropriate clothing, we agree that walking wouldn’t be a bad idea, as it’d be nice to spend some time outside a car for a while. It’s raining a little when we get down to the street, but it only really accentuates the serenity that we both desperately needed, and so we head down towards the heavily-lit center of the city. 

The sun begins to rise as we trounce around, looking through windows and popping in and out of small stores along the street as they open for the day; and soon enough, we start looking around for a place to get some breakfast. 

After eating, we slowly make our way back to the apartment, where we _both_ decide to get some homework done (a rare occurrence considering we’re in each other’s presence). As I’m flipping through the pages of a blueprint-filled notebook, searching for some minuscule calculation I did months ago, something occurs to me. Jack and I both had just started up classes again after a week and a half of Christmas break, so what if all the horrors we had seen in that old building had just been stress-induced, wildly fantastical hallucinations? I know it seems weird for two people to both be experiencing the same delusions, but it’s not impossible. It’s like folie a deux. 

As much as I hate thinking about it, going back into the building would be the only way to confirm that we weren’t losing it. I come to the conclusion that I’m going to try and dismiss that solution for as long as I can while, in the meantime, trying to find another way to solve this mystery.   
—————  
Things remain the same for a long while; and, after a solid five hours, I realize that we both have been sitting in total silence, not talking to each other or ourselves, not even shifting around all that much. Finally, having held out ‘til four in the afternoon, I announce to Jack that I’m gonna go get some air. He doesn’t object, but when he approves, I can tell he doesn’t want me to go out alone. I leave anyway, and my feet immediately begin leading me towards the dreaded BuzzFeed building. I start getting the same creepy vibes I’d had the first time I neared it, even though I’m still two or three blocks away, which sends an icy chill up and down my spine. But I keep going until I’m standing in front of the building; and I just stand there for a while, staring up into the cloudy windows warily. 

_What are you hiding, Buzzfeed? What really happened, what’s the truth?_

I let out a sigh and keep moving towards the more populated area of town with eyes trained down at the ground, as though anyone I locked eyes with would automatically be suspicious of me. I try and lift my spirits by willing myself to enjoy the warmth displayed in the windows of all the little streetside shops, but I soon find out that I can’t keep my conscience comfortable forever and start heading back to the apartment. 

I find Jack in the same position he was in when I left, which really doesn’t come as a surprise to me, but instead of sitting back down, I say, “Hey, we literally haven’t eaten since seven this morning. Do we wanna get something?”

My visibly bored-as-hell brother turns to me but doesn’t say anything for several minutes. When he finally does, I find it strange that he sounds like he’s completely content doing what he’s doing. 

“Like what? We’ve already gone out, like, five times. My bank account’s gonna start crying out for help any day now.”

I take a few seconds to think, and Jack turns back to face his Twitter dashboard.

“Takeout?” I say with a small shrug.

“Takeout,” Jack replies, turning to stare me dead in the eye; and suddenly, we both make a mad dash for the door.

Thundering down the stairs, we can only hope that no one else currently in the complex will complain against us, but that’s the least of our concerns. Right now, who gets to sit shotgun is more important. 

Jack wins due to being several inches taller than me, and so I _very_ begrudgingly climb into the driver’s seat of my truck and start it. But instead of just laying back and relaxing like he probably thought he’d be doing, Jack is tasked with finding a good takeout place within our vicinity. 

“Really?” He complains at me.

I give him the sassiest look I can manage and reply, “Well _excuse_ me, but I’m the one that’s carting your ass around right now.”

He mutters something under his breath and aggressively pulls his phone out of his sweatshirt pocket. 

He ends up guiding me to a three-star Chinese place, where we quickly go inside and grab some stuff to munch on. But on the way back to the car, it comes to my attention that the fear of last night’s events has finally vanished. 

“Bullshit!” I say under my breath, and I really don’t expect Jack to respond, much less hear in the first place. 

“What’s that all about?” He asks, shocked.

“Bullshit,” I repeat, “That whole building was bullshit.”

“Ajay, what the hell are you talking about?”

“The BuzzFeed building, you idiot.”

Finally realizing what the hell I’m talking about, Jack goes on.

“Well, then, why? How so?”

“A _demon,_ Jack, really? It all seems so _stupid_ now,” I reply.

We get to the car and Jack swings himself into the passenger side while I seat myself in front of the wheel. 

“It very well _could’ve_ been fake,” Jack comments on my last words. “There are plenty of reasonable explanations for what happened, from our eyes playing tricks on us to some dipshits playing a prank.”

For the most part, I’m satisfied with what my brother concluded, but there’s still some part of me that wants real answers. So as soon as we get back to our self-aided VRBO, I pop the question of whether we should go back into the building or not.

“Well, if we really wanna confirm that we’re not going insane, then I’m all in,” Jack says, a little too emphatic for my liking. 

Jumping to the chase, I immediately suggest that this time, we should bring some means of defense, just in case things go sideways like they did before. Jack agrees and we quickly decide to go in around the same time as before. 

But a small round of arguing is necessary before I can get a day to decompress.


	6. Retries + Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not a lot of notes on this one either, but I should mention that I did keep track of the time so everything should be accurate

The next day is decidedly restless, but as dusk turns to night and the streets into streams, we begin readying for our second trip to search for the truth. 

We gather up the flashlights we had used before, as well as thrown on our leather jackets (despite the fact that Jack’s now has three, actually quite fashionable, claw marks on the back of it) and, on my part, a sweatshirt. But just as we’re about to head out the door, I quickly rush back into the apartment and grab my little knife from where I’d placed it on the island in the kitchen.

“What’s that for?” Jack asks me when I head into the hallway, where he’d moved to.

“If this really is just some stupid prank, I wanna show whoever’s master plan it was not to mess with me,” I reply. “You’re not bringing one?”

But instead of giving me a straight answer, Jack only grins slyly.

“Of course I am, I just wanted to know if you were bringing it for the same reason I’m bringing mine, and I guess you are,” he says, slipping a knife very similar to my own out of his pocket to show me. 

“I shoulda figured,” I mutter, and Jack responds, “Don’t underestimate me, Jay. I’m always one step ahead of you.”

“Hm, are you now?”

With a massive eye roll from my brother, we head down the hallway and the elevator to reach the lobby, each with some unwarranted confidence filling our subconsciences.

Walking down the street, we notice that despite the fact that it’s a less-chilly Friday night, there aren’t many people on the street. This seems like a normal thing, but it’s weird considering the number of people that were here earlier in the day. 

Or at least on the streets near the BuzzFeed building that is.

There are several more people on neighboring streets, but they aren’t really coming any closer than about two blocks from the building.

“People around here must know what’s going on in there, or else they wouldn’t be avoiding the damn place,” I comment to Jack, who nods in agreement.

“Yeah,” he says, “so either this person is an _actual_ psychopath, or we’re dealing with something way beyond a prank.”

The building seems more foreboding than ever when we approach it, and I suddenly get those weird vibes again. An icy chill runs up and down my spine, making me shiver like I’m standing in a snowstorm.

“Ugh,” Jack says, shuddering.

Apparently, despite being a skeptic, he’s not immune to creepy energy.

Pushing the razor-wired chain link fence open, I take a quick glance behind me and see, standing in the shadows, the _same_ hooded figure I’d seen the first time we went in. I still can’t make out their face, as they’re standing at the entrance of an alleyway (where the shadows seem to be darkest in my mind), which only raises my levels of suspicion. However, this time, I don’t bring it up to Jack. Trying not to think about their eyes on my back, I turn back and we walk up to the already-unlocked door (and I’m a little unnerved that no one bothered to come and chain it back up), but we both hesitate before going in, me first, then Jack this time and the heaviness inside the building is overwhelming. 

“C’mon,” I whisper to Jack and slowly head in the path we’d taken our first time there.

Surprisingly, we make it all the way back to that open-area workroom without anything out-of-the-ordinary happening, but as soon as we cross the threshold, things start to get _really_ bad. As we’re searching the room, slowly splitting up as we go, I hear Jack whisper over to me from a couple yards away to come and look at what he’d found, and from his tone of voice, I can tell it’s nothing good. When I rejoin him, I see that the thing that’s caught his interest is one of those big metal tables lying on the floor, _folded_ like a piece of paper. 

“What the hell did _that?_ ” I say, shocked.

“I have no idea, but no person could’ve done it,” Jack replies, “unless they did it and then brought it into the building.”

Shaken, but more curious than ever, we move on to inspect the rest of the room. We find two more of the tables lying folded on the floor, effectively raising our fear levels to anything higher than either of us has experienced before. But other than that, nothing has changed since we last came. 

Wanting to know who was behind all of this, we decide to explore some parts of the building that we hadn’t been to during our first sweep and head towards a fourth floor. This fourth floor has another large, open work area like that on the third floor, but strangely, this one hasn’t been touched by anything but dust and time: the tables are all in order, the computers are still on top of them and plugged in (though they aren’t working due to the building not having power), and the chairs are all neatly pushed in. But though nothing looks out of place, the heavy feeling that’s spread around the whole building is more overwhelming here than in any other part of the building we’ve been to thus far. 

As a way to “clear the room” before we keep moving, Jack pans his flashlight across the back walls, and to the horror of us both, the black-eyed man we’d encountered last time was standing in front of one of the windows, just looking back at us and grinning. 

Quickly becoming on-edge and simply terrified, I yell, “Who are you and why the hell are you here?”

I don’t get a response, so I throw out something else. 

“Why are you trying to trick us? You know, we’re on to you!”

Not expecting a response, I’m absolutely petrified when I get a low, guttural growl as a direct reply to my question. Jack jumps next to me and I tense up, holding onto my knife with a white-knuckled grip. But suddenly, some of the heaviness in the room lifts and there’s a soft _thud,_ like someone falling back against the wall. 

Jack, who’d let his flashlight drop to his side in terror, is unable to raise it again due to fear, so we’re only able to rely on our eyes. This proves to be widely unsuccessful, as the building is so dark, they aren’t able to adjust properly, which allows us to see only shadows. I squint hard against the darkness and see that the figure appears to have fallen back against the window, now slumped over on the sill.

 _Why—what?_ I think, unnerved. _Okay, we’re either dealing with someone who’s getting worn out by their own little game or something VERY wrong is going on here._

I reiterate my thoughts to Jack, who wants to go check it out; but I’m still a little reluctant. So as a way to reassure me, he shakily raises his flashlight and points it back at the window where we’d seen the figure sitting. But he’s gone, and now we’re both freaking out. 

“Hey, Ajay?” Jack says, turning to me.

“Yeah?” I reply.

“I’m beginning to think this isn’t a prank.”


	7. Panic + Pure Terror

Immediately, we’re both thinking that we just need to leave now, that something else is bound to happen at this point. So we very quickly head back towards the stairs and down to the second floor. I take a little bit more caution this time so I don’t fall again, but we don’t make it any further than the second-floor hallway due to yet another set of horrors. 

I begin to descend the stairs that lead to the first floor, Jack close behind, but when I shine my flashlight down it to ensure a safe descent, the epitome of both of our horrors is standing right there on the landing. To Jack’s surprise, I end up stumbling backward and almost tripping over the top stair, coming pretty damn close to knocking him over (again). 

“What?” He asks, and I don’t even bother telling him.

“Just run,” I half-whisper, like letting the demon guy know what I was saying would trigger a string of godawful events that no one would ever want to even think about being put through.

We both thunder down the hallway (and should I add, it felt like running through a hotel hallway), hoping and praying that whatever we saw wasn’t following us. But somehow, expecting what came next, we turn around when we get to the end of the hallway and he’s there at the other end. At this point, I’m realizing that the reason we keep seeing him is because he doesn’t want us to leave and is playing a little game of cat and mouse to pin us in a corner so we _can’t._

“Jack, he’s not gonna let us leave,” I tell my brother, and he growls a little, probably feeling both helpless and irritated.

Well, the feeling is mutual.

I turn and look the demon dead in his black eyes and, shaking like an earthquake, say, “Let us _leave._ ”

“If you don’t, things are gonna get pretty damn bad,” Jack adds.

I feel like that was a little too _Die Hard_ of him and let him know with a face that says, “are you kidding me?” He shrugs and shakes his head almost irritatedly. 

“Well, sorry, I didn’t know you didn’t wanna fight for passage.”

I can’t really tell if he’s being sarcastic or not ‘cause he’s shaking so much, but it’s not my top priority to know at the moment. 

Clearly, we fucked up, because the demon is gone. Again. 

“Maybe he just left?” Jack suggests, and right now, I just want to get out of the building so I roll with it. 

We hastily try and move back to the stairs, but at one point I turn around to see how close Jack is following, even though I can pretty much feel him breathing down my neck; and I freeze. Just freeze.

Jack looks confused but also freezes once he realizes what I’m so scared over. He doesn’t _dare_ turn around, keeping his eyes trained on me.

_We’ve got two seconds here before he does something, _he mouths to me and almost immediately I see the demon raise a hand equipped with serrated black claws up behind him.__

__“I’m gonna count to three and you’re gonna duck,” I whisper. “Don’t ask, don’t hesitate, and _don’t. Fuck. Up._ ”_ _

__Jack nods slightly and I proceed._ _

__“One...two... _three!_ ”_ _

__Just as the demon takes a swing, Jack ducks and rolls out of the way, lunging in my direction once he’s back on his feet._ _

__The demon is no longer hesitant to charge at us and in a flash, we’re both brandishing knives._ _

__Jack makes the first offensive move, but to my, and probably his own, horror, he’s thrown out of the way with the simple swipe of a hand. The demon looks down at him for a moment before turning and heading towards me._ _

___Shit shit shit shit,_ my brain tells me desperately. _Do something before he does, do something before HE DOES._ _ _

__I close my eyes for a couple seconds, mulling over what I should do and battling my fight or flight, but when I open them, it’s already too late. The demon is standing right in front of me, even though a second ago, he was half a hall’s length away from me. He raises a clawed hand over me, just like he did to Jack, but _I_ don’t have enough time to react. I whirl around just as he draws his claws down in a neat arc, and I can feel them tear through the leather of my jacket _and_ my sweatshirt alike. I quickly find myself having to bite back a scream so hard that I half-expect my teeth to just shatter. I fall to the ground in pain, the demon standing over me. _ _

__“AJAY!” I hear Jack scream from several feet away._ _

__His footsteps near me faster than a falcon in a stoop, but the demon has other plans. He whirls around and stops Jack dead in his tracks._ _

__“ _Leave her ALONE!_ ” I hear Jack demand fiercely._ _

__I shift a little bit, wanting to get up, but I'm in too much pain to do so, and can only watch as the demon slashes at my brother while he tries to fight back. But soon he can’t, and the demon seizes the moment. He grabs Jack by the front of his jacket and drags him towards the stairwell at the end of the hallway. I begin shaking violently when I hear the _CRASH_ that follows a loud “NO!” from Jack._ _

__I listen as the demon’s footsteps near me again and raise my head with narrowed eyes as he approaches me. With no hesitation at all, he goes to take another swing, but I, still with a knife in my hand, slash at him as he does, and he recoils. I can feel adrenaline filling my system and slowly raise myself to my feet with the help of a nearby wall. It’s hard to stay standing, but I try my best and as the demon comes at me again, I counter him with a few of my own hits._ _

__“I won’t let you _kill_ me!” I hiss at him, terrified, but somehow slightly irritated at the same time._ _

__There’s a deep, sickening growl, and the knife is wrenched from my grasp by some unseen force as the demon glares at me._ _

___Oh, shit,_ is my final thought before things go even further downhill. _ _

__The demon takes several more slashes at me, two of which are direct hits, and tosses me around until I can’t even think straight._ _

__Lying on my back, I screw my eyes shut and prepare for the worst, but when nothing more comes, I open them to find that the demon is gone._ _

__I sum up the small amount of energy that I have left and roll onto my side to see Jack struggling back up the stairs with a hand holding his ribs. He sees me and immediately runs unsteadily to my side._ _

__“Ajay?” He says in a flustered tone. “Please tell me you’re okay.”_ _

__“No, not really,” I respond shakily, attempting to get to my hands and knees._ _

__“We gotta get outta here,” Jack says._ _

__He hurriedly helps me to my feet and we hear a deafening screech, like a knife on a metal table._ _

__That’s enough to set us both over the edge in fear and in a wild burst of adrenaline, we sprint down the stairs and out the front doors. We don’t stop running until I suddenly, about halfway to the apartment complex, stumble and fall onto the pavement._ _

__“Jack!” I call up to my brother, who’s a solid ten feet in front of me. “Jack, wait!”_ _

__The adrenaline in my veins appears to be wearing off a lot faster than it should be, which makes the pain much worse, so Jack decides that shaken though we are, we just need to try to calm down and take it easy the rest of the way home. He puts an arm around my shoulders for support and I put a hand on his, and we slowly make our way back to the complex, and hopefully, sanity._ _


	8. Mistakes + Misfortune (temp. name)

Nothing feels safe when we get back. There’s a lingering feeling of someone watching us from every dark corner in the room, and it’s extremely hard not to have the same mindset as that of someone who’s being tracked by a serial killer (which, let’s be honest, isn’t too far from the truth); and even though we’re in the safest place we could be in such a bad situation, panic and pure terror are present, which is causing me, and probably Jack as well, to begin shaking as violently as though we’re stuck in a snowstorm. It’s also pretty goddamn hard to wrap our minds around what the hell just happened, which results in us _both_ lying on the _ground,_ trying to do just that with a zero-percent success rate.  
  
I’m convinced that if anyone were to just walk in, they’d think we were dead. 

The shock takes a _while_ to wear off; I’m talking damn near an hour and a half of me and Jack just laying on the floor of the apartment, so much in shock that the literal only thing we can do is blink. 

But when we finally do regain our senses, it still takes a toll on our exhausted, beaten-to-hell forms. Jack remains on his hands and knees for a minute or two before forcing himself all the way onto his feet. He comes over to me and says, “Can you get up?”

For the first time possibly ever, I find no trace of humor on his face.

I merely shake my head a little and he holds out his hand with a sigh. But as I try to do my part, I’m forced to remember the painful souvenir I brought back from the building. 

I emit a small cry, scaring Jack and causing him to let go of my hand. I land on my back in an explosion of pain that renders me down and out. Jack quickly snaps back to his senses and comes to grab my hand again, saying, in a flustered tone, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Ajay, I didn’t mean to—”

I hesitate a little, finding myself once again having to bite back a scream, but respond, “No, no, it’s fine, _I_ scared _you._ ” 

Either way, I know he’s aware it’s not.

He _very_ carefully pulls me up, successfully this time, and once I’m standing, tells me, “You’re probably not gonna need stitches or anything, but it’s probably a good idea to at least _try_ and clean those scratches up.”

I really don’t need things getting any worse than they already are, so I agree. I grab a change of clothes and head into the bathroom to patch myself up. 

I wouldn’t exactly call the next fifteen minutes pleasurable; and all I can say about it is that using rubbing alcohol sucks, especially considering the extent of my injuries. I find myself having to grit my teeth against screams pretty much the entire time but I soon find that I did a pretty good job. 

As it turns out, gauze is a true lifesaver. 

However, I can’t reach my back without it hurting like hell, so I throw my clean clothes on and go consult Jack. He agrees to help me, and said agreement is followed by another round of me trying not to scream bloody murder while telling him I’m fine. 

Eventually, he finishes up, and I start to feel a little bit better.

I thank him and he goes over to sit on the couch, where he takes up an exhausted position with a heavy sigh. I notice he’s got a hand draped over his chest and offer to grab him some ice, to which he agrees with as much enthusiasm as he can muster. I then sit down on the couch next to him. 

“Now what?” I ask. 

There’s no possible way I’m going back in that damn building again, so I propose heading home.

“I don’t know _what_ we should do,” Jack replies flatly. 

“We...uh...we know it’s—he’s real now, so what are we _supposed_ to do?” I follow up.

“Every part of my too-morally-good-for-the-present-moment conscience is telling me that we should do something to help him, but there’s no way in _hell_ I’d go back in there,” he replies.

Screw him for being such a good person; but deep down, I know it’d be the right thing to do.

“Even if we were to _hypothetically_ go play Satanists for a hot sec and try to exorcise him, how in the _living hell_ would we go about it?”

“That is a _valid_ question.”

“Cool, then I guess I can knock _that_ off the radar.”

I gingerly get to my feet and hike to the kitchen to get a little water and come up with another proposition.

“I don’t know if I’m ready to leave the city yet, but we could go find a hotel or something to just chill for a while to get all this off our minds and _then_ head out when we’re ready.”

“Sure.”

So, while standing in the kitchen and leaning casually against the counter while even more casually sipping my water, I call around, only to find that everyone around the area (and within our price range is completely booked). So with an irritated sigh, I sink back into the couch. 

“What the _hell_ are we gonna do now?” I ask my brother, sounding just as hopeless as I feel.

I expect a fairly normal response from him, as one does, but to my confusion, he decides to take the conversation in another direction. 

“ _How_ the hell am _I_ supposed to comprehend what just happened?”

I just shrug, being pretty unprepared for this inquiry.

“Exactly,” he replies to my gesture.

Seems like he’s started to get witty with his words again.

“That’s not funny,” I tell him.

“Actually, it is, but it wasn’t really supposed to be.”

“You’re being serious?”

A nod from him.

“But seriously, what am I supposed to say about the demon? I’m a skeptic, for God’s sake.”

“I—” I begin, but my brain robs me of words. “I don’t know.”

The following silence is so tense you could hear a drop of water hit the floor.

“I guess you know how Shane feels now,” I say eventually, and Jack scoffs.  
—————  
To keep the negative thoughts of the building off our minds, Jack and I end up chatting about the parts of our outside-of-college lives that we’ve been too busy to talk about lately. I work at an off-campus art supply store, which Jack finds boring (even though it can be pretty eventful sometimes), so he tries rerouting the topic to his own job at an even further off-campus Subway.

“What do you mean working at a fast-food chain isn’t interesting?” he tells me after a bit of a vent on my part. “You should _see_ some of the people we get there; it’s bullshit!”

By the time we get done debating over whose job is better, it’s about six-forty five, and no morning has sucked more than this one. 

Alongside major lack of sleep and general fear, boredom is a big contender in my overall shitty mood. Jack’s isn’t much better, but he still has the audacity to tell me off about it. We argue for a few minutes over the entire thing before once again getting bored and shunning each other due to a nonexistent resolution.

I then tell _myself_ off mentally for not having any more homework to pass the time on (weird thing to be annoyed about, right?), but, luckily, my roommate swoops in to save the day by texting me some updates on her trip.

Like I mentioned before, said roommate (whose name is Kara, by the way) travels with a small missionary group that’s part of the college; and right now, she’s in Cambodia, which is a fairly common country for the group to travel to. However, she tells me that it’s a different experience every time she goes, so I ask for updates to prove the statement. Seems a little distrusting of me, I know, but I’m not exactly her biggest fan (despite the fact that I live with her). 

She sends me a couple of pictures of places she’s been to thus far for the next half hour or so, all of which I think are absolutely gorgeous (and Jack thinks so too, hilariously); they each have an elaborately written caption that makes it seem like she’s one of those fifty-year-old Facebook moms that’s way too excited about everything she posts. Jack gets quite the kick out of my description when I verbalize it, and I congratulate myself mentally for getting a genuine reaction out of him. 

But, as we’ve both discovered before, we can’t keep thoughts of the building out of mind forever. This time, they come so suddenly, that I just put my phone down for a moment. 

“What’s up?” Jack asks me with no change of mentality by the sound of it.

“Do you mind if I go walk around a little bit? I just need some fresh air, that’s all,” I tell him, my abrupt change of mood definitely giving him weird vibes.

“Yeah...but don’t stay out there forever.”

With that, I throw my jacket on and head out the door a lot more quickly than I need to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) When Jack says that "there's no way in hell he'd go back in there," I left out the ever because he’s stretching the truth a little
> 
> 2) No of course I don't work at Subway what are you talking about


	9. Ramblings + Ryan

Soon after leaving, I become so mentally uncomfortable that my mind starts screaming at me to sit down. So I limp over to a nearby bench and ever-so-gingerly do just that. I drop my head into my hands and let out a long shuddering sigh. Though I came out here to clear my head and calm down, my nerves just won’t settle and stress seems to have found an adequate home here in my mind. 

I try as hard as I can to get the demon’s blank black stare out of my thoughts, but to absolutely no avail, and suddenly, as I near a small breakdown, I feel a hand on my shoulder and jump, frightened. I very warily raise my head and find a guy in a black hoodie standing in front of me, looking surprised. 

“Hey, easy, I’m not a demon or anything,” he says. 

My mind is quickly thrown into panicked confusion. 

_How does he know?_ Is the question continuously resonating within the bounds of my shaky mentality. 

“How’d you know what I was thinking about?” I repeat the question out loud. 

The look of surprise hasn’t left the stranger’s face and it’s a little unnerving. 

“I didn’t know what you were thinking about,” he says, “but I’ve seen that look all too many times lately.” 

Now it’s my turn to be surprised. I’ve never met this guy before (though I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere before), but he’s talking to me like I’m an old friend. So needing answers that he could possibly have, I decide to _carefully_ go along with it.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say, my voice full of exhausted dominance. 

“Can I sit?” The stranger asks, to which I respond with an almost annoyed, “Sure.” 

He must’ve noticed the bloody gauze bandaging through the tears in my jeans because the first thing he says after seating himself is, “You’re hurt.” 

I just nod while staring at the ground. 

“Do you mind me asking what happened?” 

With a sigh, I consider the fact that I don’t want to tell him about the BuzzFeed building, the demon, any of it, but I’m too utterly exhausted to lie. 

“You know that creepy building down the street? The old BuzzFeed headquarters?” 

“Yeah?” He responds as though anticipating something, and I can instantly tell by his tone that he knows something that I don’t. 

“My half-brother and I went in there. Alone. At night.” 

“God _dammit,_ ” the stranger says, suddenly and strangely distressed. “What were you _thinking?_ ” 

I’m shaking again at the frustrated tone that the stranger is using (plus the fact that I’m still scared shitless from being in the building). 

“I don’t know. God, I don’t know,” I say quietly. “We just wanted a bit of a thriller, that’s all.” 

I’m scared in so many different ways now and the stranger seems to pick up on my fear. 

Shaking his head, he says, “Sorry I got so worked up there, it’s just that—“ He sighs. “I’m Ryan.” 

My eyes widen a little and I look up at him. It’s too weird not to be a coincidence.

“Yeah,” he says, looking mildly annoyed. 

But his face suddenly takes on a stone-cold appearance. 

“I need you to tell me what happened when you went in there the second time.” 

In the split second his words take to register in my head, I realize something. Ryan had been the shady figure I’d seen watching us from across the street both times we went into the building and he. Knew. _Everything._

“We just thought that we should go back into the building to confirm what we saw was real and we weren’t just crazy.” 

At this point, I just assume Ryan is well aware of the demon. 

“I brought a knife and so did my brother; Jack, his name is. But at one point, as we were exploring the building some more, the demon showed up behind Jack and raised a hand, which was black from the wrist down and had serrated claws. I noticed just in time and got Jack to duck just as the demon took a swing, but Jack only ended up getting thrown halfway across the hallway anyway. But before he could get back up and to me, the demon did this.”

I pause and turn my back to Ryan, presenting to him the huge tears in my jacket. His expression instantly melts from one of fear to one of concern. I continue. 

“It—well, he managed to get his claws through a layer of thick leather and both my hoodie and shirt, shredding my back. And to top it all off, when Jack eventually got to me and tried to help me back up, the demon grabbed the collar of his jacket, dragged him to the end of the third-floor hallway we were in and straight-up hurled him down the stairs. The demon then came back to me and I managed to land a few hits with my knife, but I only pissed him off. He slashed me a couple more times, twice on the leg, and he grazed my face. That rendered me down and out. But as quickly as he had appeared, he was gone, and for no apparent reason.” 

“Where did you stab the demon?” Ryan asks out of the blue. 

“Torso, shoulder maybe. I don’t remember, it was all kind of a blur,” I respond, but Ryan still seems uncomfortable, so I ask, “Why?”

He starts raking his fingers through his hair and replies, “Because the demon in that building is actually a friend of mine. His name is Shane.” 

“Holy shit,” I say after a quick hesitation. “I _knew_ it! I _knew_ it was him, but I could’ve killed him. What the hell was I thinking?”

I think Ryan can tell that my mental state isn’t really in the best spot right now, so he says, “Hey, it’s fine. You were scared as hell; you didn’t know what to do.” 

Still, I find his words completely pointless because he seems to be just as close to having a mental breakdown as I am. 

By the time the bulk of our conversation has ended, a heavy rain is falling and I’m sopping wet. 

“Here, why don’t you just come back to where Jack and I are staying? I’m soaked and I want to fill him in,” I propose, as I’m both wet and feel like shit; I still need answers from Ryan, and he nods in reply.

I struggle to get to my feet, turning down both of Ryan’s requests to help, and once I eventually do, I head back toward the apartment with him in tow. Soon, he catches up to me and says, “I don’t think you ever told me your name.” 

Without really turning to look at him, I reply, “Oh, um...I’m—I’m Ajay.” 

Ryan doesn’t say anything, just nods in response. But after a bit, he speaks again. 

“You said you were _staying_ somewhere. You don’t live around here?” 

I can tell that he’s having some trouble reading me, which is not only making him a little nervous but also causing him to ask a lot of me. 

Really, though, I don’t blame him; having a demon possess your friend could make you pretty wary, as you’d probably think it could happen to anyone. So, though I’m getting slightly uncomfortable, I decide to do him a solid and resolve his inquiries. 

With a mental sigh, I say, “No; Jack and I go to a University about two hours or so north of here, and we came to the conclusion that we’d stick around for a few days after investigating the building.” 

Ryan replies with a revelational, “Oh, okay.” 

“We just never thought it would end up like this,” I add.

He hits me with another question after a short pause: “What University did you say you went to?” 

“It’s called Sequoia State. It’s a newer University, two years in the making, I think.” 

I put to thought the fact that he sounds like he’s going to follow me back to the college and murder me, and I try to think of a way to end the conversation without making him feel bad. But good timing flies in to save the day as I notice that we’ve reached the apartment complex. 

Ryan follows me into the lobby, and then into the elevator whilst staying totally quiet. I half-expect him to ask me some other semi-personal question, but he doesn’t, leaving me and probably himself standing in tense awkward silence. We reach the seventh floor and I lead him to the door of the apartment. Upon entrance, I find Jack pacing contemplatively around the room with his eyes cast downward; and he looks up when he hears me come in. He rushes over to me with a look that says “you’re not dead”, but before he actually says anything to me, he sees Ryan, and I’m no longer able to tell what he’s thinking. 

“Is that—“ he cut himself off and turned his eyes from me to Ryan. 

“Are you...Ryan Bergara?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) When Ajay mentions that Ryan "must've seen the bloody gauze bandaging through the tears in her jeans," it's because she's wearing, get this, ripped jeans
> 
> 2) When Ajay "comes to the realization" that they guy in the building was Shane and hesitates, she’s trying to figure out how to lie to Ryan effectively because she already knew it was Shane but didn't want Ryan to know because that would go SO WELL


	10. Authenticty + Answers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is just kind of a sidenote but this whole thing is absolutely hilarious because in a little "more" part of an episode (Tombstone, maybe? idr) Shane was wondering about what would happen if he became a demon; and I literally had NO IDEA about this until after I had written the storyline so

After a few rather long moments of silence, Ryan sighs. 

“That would be me,” he says, and Jack looks more shocked than ever.

I’m surprised at how quickly his tone had changed from one of nervous inquiry to one of mental exhaustion. This seems to put him in a much more chill place now, which neutralizes my thoughts. I suggest that we all have a seat, and to Jack, I say that we can fill Ryan in on what had been talked about outside. Jack agrees with me, but before I can take a single step towards the couch, Ryan stops me in my tracks.

“Actually, there’s a little restaurant not too far from here that we could go to if you guys wanted,” he says.

Jack is immediately on board, being the open-to-anything kind of guy that he is, and he says, once again, that he’d go anywhere for food. However, I’m rather hesitant. 

I think for a few seconds, considering that Ryan would probably be more comfortable talking in a familiar place. I can imagine that he’s beyond stressed from everything that he’s been put through lately. I look over at Jack like I want him to give an answer to my little mental seminar, and he says, “C’mon, Ajay, we haven’t eaten since we got back.”

He makes a good point.

“Okay,” I reply, “I s’pose you’re right.”

Jack reacts with an excited, “Cool!” and I turn back to Ryan, waving toward the still open door with an elegant gesture.

“Lead the way,” I say.

Once we get down to the street, Jack lays a hand on my shoulder like he’s making sure I don’t fall. 

Save for a few bruises and broken ribs, he managed to escape the building relatively in one piece and after, devoted his remaining sanity to helping me. With that in mind, I just let it happen. 

Ryan, remaining a few steps ahead of us, keeps his eyes fixed on the pavement as we pass the dreaded BuzzFeed building. I look up at Jack, wanting to share a thought with him, but for some reason, he doesn’t notice, so I do some mental roleplay and try to put myself in Ryan’s shoes for a moment.

 _What would happen if Jack were possessed by a demon?_ I ask myself. _What would I do?_

The answer is inevitably horrible any way I think about it, so I quit. Suddenly, Jack catches me looking at him and gives me a look of mild concern.

“You good?” He asks.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I reply, “just thinking.”

At this point, I can’t reiterate enough how bad it would be to lose a friend to such an unexplainable end, so, right then and there, I arrive at the conclusion that we have to help Ryan. I don’t know how, and my conscience refuses to stop telling me not to trust him, but it’s gotta happen. 

Ryan looks back to make sure we’re still following him before stopping to point out our destination across the street: Alleycat’s. There isn’t much traffic, given that it’s a three-thirty on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, so we do a little jaywalking. Red light from the bedazzled neon sign emblazoned with the restaurant’s name washes over us as we enter, and it feels vaguely like when I used to wander into my grandmother’s den: the dim lighting makes me feel warm and comfortable, and safe. I shudder, but only because of the drastic change of atmosphere.

Within ten minutes we’ve seated ourselves at a booth and are chatting pensively.

“So….” Jack says, apparently lacking words for the first time ever. “Um...I don’t really know where to start here, but...what, exactly, is going on?”

I get ready to explain, but Ryan beats me to the chase. “I was told you knew about Shane,” he says to Jack, almost as if his friend had died. 

“Yeah...I do…” comes Jack’s suspicious reply. “I’ve seen a few episodes of _Ruining History._ Does he tie into this whole ordeal somehow?”

“Actually, he _is_ the ordeal,” I say before Ryan can (and I subconsciously feel proud of myself for this). 

“The... _demon_ in the BuzzFeed building is him. Kind of.”

I shudder.

“I _knew_ he fucking looked familiar!” Jack bursts out.

I want desperately to ask him why he didn’t tell me it was Shane and prevent me from stabbing him to cover my ass, but I don’t want to strike up an argument in front of Ryan, so instead, after a short silence, I tell him, “Ryan was the one I saw standing across the street when we went in both times.”

I glance over at Ryan, half-waiting for him to back me up, and he does.

“I’ve seen too many people go in there, three of which never came back out, and the rest were pretty badly shaken up.”

He turns his head away for a few seconds and then looks back at us.

“You two are the only ones that went back in again.”

“We kinda just wanted to make sure we weren’t going crazy,” Jack explains.

“Yeah, it’s like I said before,” I say. “We brought the knives just in case we did run into someone or some _thing._ ”

Ryan gives a little sniff of amusement.

“Well, you’re not crazy, I can say that much for sure,” he says.

And then, like Jack and I are private investigators, he announces, “I need your help. I need to get Shane back and I know _damn well_ I can’t do it myself.”

I’m slightly shocked at his all too sudden proclamation and thus struggle to find words. 

“Okay,” I begin, “um…”

“What can we do? How can we help?” Jack finishes for me, and I play along with a, “what he said.”

“Could you find some things that we could do or use to deal with the demon?” He asks straightaway.

“Sure, I—“ I start, but I catch Jack very slowly turn to look at me with the smuggest, most impertinent grin I’ve ever seen plastered onto his face. 

“Okay, no, it’s your turn to do the research,” I say I’m harmless irritation. 

Jack scoffs at this and turns back to Ryan.

“Sure, we can help with that.”

Apparently disregarding our little personal feud, Ryan smiles.

“Thanks a ton. I can’t even tell you how long I’ve wanted to come across someone who’d be willing to help me take down a demon. It’s pretty damn hard, obviously.” 

After our down-to-business conversation comes to an end, the rest of our afternoon is spent chatting with Ryan. We tell him about our time in college, and he tells us about his situation, having been put out of an amazing job by the demon.

“Five of my co-workers were killed when the demon attacked the building,” he explains, “and the rest blamed me for the whole thing.” 

He then proceeds to explain that he currently lives alone and doesn’t have a job, living largely on whatever money he still had from working at BuzzFeed. 

Though everything he says feels like a massive guilt trip, the story is nothing but plausible and we have no choice but to feel bad.

“Well, if there’s anything else we can do, just let us know,” I tell him, and Jack nods in agreement. 

“Thanks,” Ryan says, “I really appreciate it.”


	11. Trauma + the Truth

On the way back home from the restaurant, something occurs to me.

“Wait, hold on,” I say, stopping dead in the middle of the sidewalk; and Jack follows suit. “Are we fucking crazy?”

“Come again?” Jack responds.

He looks pretty confused by my sudden inquiry, and so I give sort of explanation.

“Are we _insane?_ We can’t go back into that building. We can’t, we just can’t.”

“Ryan needs our help,” Jack replies, looking at me like I’m crazy. “He’s practically been living on the streets because the demon took Shane. He just wants his friend back and after all that he’s been through, it’d be damn near cruel not to help him do it.”

“Jack, look what that black-eyed... _bitchface_ did to us! He almost tore us to pieces! Not to mention, he concussed you pretty horribly! Does that say _anything_ to you? At _all?_ ” 

For some reason, I’m suddenly struggling to control this unwarranted whirlwind of negative emotions that has inexplicably entered my mind and I can tell Jack’s starting to get nervous about it. 

“What’s _wrong_ with you?” He says in a disgusted tone.

“Hm...maybe I don’t want to DIE? Have you considered THAT?” I respond bitterly. 

“Then why the HELL did you seem so game when he asked us to help?”

“I don’t know! I don’t _fucking_ know!”

I immediately stop myself from saying anything else, mentally appalled by my previous tone of voice, but am also irritated that Jack can’t see why I’m so opposed to helping Ryan all of the sudden. I guess it was just so that he didn’t feel bad. After all, just about no one else would have listened to his story.

I don’t know what else to say or do, and so I forcefully shove my hands into my jacket pockets and limp past my brother. I can feel his eyes drilling into my back as I go, which actually makes me a bit embarrassed, but he soon follows, seemingly keeping his distance.

Once in the elevator, I keep my eyes trained on the ground, though I can feel Jack giving me a hardcore side-eye every ten seconds or so. 

I practically barrel through the apartment door, making a beeline for the high-top table in the kitchen. I seat myself and right away set my head down on folded arms. Jack goes over to the couch and sits, but only stays there for five minutes, if not less. Seconds after I hear him get up, I feel a gentle hand on my back. 

“Hey, are you okay?” Jack asks.

I lift my head just a bit to look at him.

“Does it _look,_ like I’m okay?” I say just a bit too harshly for my liking.

Jack sighs, and I put my face back into my arms.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m being such a jackass.”

“Yeah, you are, but really, I don’t blame you,” Jack responds.

I lift my head again.

“You don’t? Why? You seemed to be pretty affected on the way back here.”

“What you said about us almost getting killed was true, but I was putting Ryan’s feelings about the whole thing before ours, which is also a valid thing to do.”

“Well, I’m terrified of that damn building and I never want to go back in there again. Don’t be surprised if you have to _drag_ my ass back in. As much as I want to help Ryan, for what it’s worth, this is _not_ at _all_ what I signed up for, and I’m pretty damn sure that deep down, you feel the same way.”

“Right again.”

I put my head back down on the table and rake both hands through my hair. 

“God, indecision’s gonna kill me one day. _Literally_ kill me.”

There’s a long silence before either of us says anything else, but Jack eventually seems to come to a mental conclusion and drags another of the three chairs at the table into a position where he’s both facing me and borderline invading my personal bubble.

“You know what?” he says, turning the chair backward. “Tell me why you’re so indecisive.”

As confused as I am by what his motive here could be, I respond with, “From what I can tell, we’re the literal only other people that have completely figured out what the hell’s going on inside that building and that makes Ryan want us to help him. But on the flip side, I’m damn near positive that I’ll have a panic attack if I go in that godforsaken building again.”

“There, see?” Jack says.

“See what?”

“See why we should help Ryan. He trusts us; he has since you told him about the possessed Shane attacking us the second time we confronted him; and first of all, trust is never an easy thing to put in someone, no matter how close they are. For Ryan, it’s probably even harder because the demon basically destroyed his life. Second, I _know_ that Ryan wouldn’t be able to trust anyone but us because we went into the building twice. Not to mention, it’d feel kinda nice to exact _some_ revenge on that piece-of-shit demon for tearing us up.”

“What _exactly_ are you trying to say?”

“Ryan has no one else to turn to at this point, which would make not helping him pretty damn close to cruel. He’s in _no way_ capable of taking on the demon alone so if we said no, it’d keep tearing away at Shane’s being until there’s nothing left, until physically, he’s dead; and God only knows what kind of void that’d throw Ryan into. Ajay, what I’m trying to say is that if we don’t do something, both of them could end up dead, and we’d most likely be haunted by that mistake for the rest of our lives.”

I lean back in my chair and drive the heels of both hands into my eyes.

“Why is everything you speak the truth, goddammit?” I ask Jack in a groan.

“I’m just special, I guess,” he replies, and I can’t help but grin.

“You jackass,” I say as I watch him amble over to where his backpack sits next to the door.

However, he doesn’t actually take anything out of it, and instead practically collapses back onto the couch and flips on the massive TV that’s mounted on the wall, which is actually something I haven’t seen him do for a decent amount of time, considering he has a TV in his apartment back at the U. I want to join him, but my conscience still has me in a headlock so I remain sitting at the table, head down and thoughts in a hurricane.   
—————  
Apparently, I end up dozing off for a half-hour or so because I wake up with a neon yellow post-it note on my forehead. 

“ _Jack,_ ” I read out loud; I have to cross my eyes to see the writing, but his name is just big enough that I can make it out.

I remove it and see that it continues, “ _Need to clear my head. Be back in thirty._ ”

“So, he finally decided to act traumatized by this whole thing,” I mutter to myself.

Once I’m fully awake, I realize that I’ve never been more bored in my life and have absolutely nothing to help with that. There was no way to tell when Jack had left, so he could be gone for quite a while longer than I wanted him to be. 

Finally, I come to the conclusion that if I don’t do _something,_ I’m gonna go insane, so I grab a little notebook and pencil out of my backpack before flopping down onto the couch and beginning to doodle. But I quickly discover that even though I’m feeling a little less traumatized about the building and the demon mentally, I’m still a hot mess physically; my hand is shaking. This makes doodling inexplicably frustrating and I just give up, tossing both pencil and notebook to the ground next to the couch with a shaky sigh. 

_This has gotta stop,_ I think to myself. _I regret going in there and that’s all there is to say._

But another realization soon makes itself known.

_Will it ever stop?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) K so the reason Ajay freaks out after snapping at Jack about helping Ryan is because some of the negative vibes given by the demon kinda stuck with her. Ik this is a weird concept, and basically, what I did was take some stuff from what I've seen about negative influence on people who live in a house that's possessed and downgraded it so that experiencing the demon makes the person who had the experience more standoffish than usual and, thus, a little intimidating or nerve-wracking. It's not like "oh part of the demon left with me" it's more of a mental thing, kinda like PTSD but waaaaaay less bad
> 
> 2) Idk whether I should call this a headcanon or not but when Jack is talking to Ajay about how not helping Ryan would be cruel because "the demon would just keep tearing away at his [Shane's] being until he's physically dead," he means Shane, as a person, would be dead but he'd still be breathing because of the demon


	12. Nuance + Nil

Apparently, I’d fallen into space, because I hear the door of the apartment fly open and hit the wall; and I jump out of surprise. I hear Jack trying to stifle a laugh and roll my eyes.

“Did I really scare you that much?” he asks me.

I give him a nasty side-eye.

“Alright, fair. But I have something you might wanna know about,” Jack says. “While I was out there, something came to mind, something I’d never considered before.”

“Continue,” I say, as he’s paused. 

“Did you ever think about why the demon didn’t follow us back here?” 

“Easy. He’s bound to the building. It’s in every supernatural show I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah, but isn’t there usually something, like a physical object, that keeps them there?”

Jack makes a solid point, I can say that for sure.

“Sure, but it could also be will or unfinished business,” I add in. 

“What unfinished business would he have?” Jack inquires.

“Are you trying to find an ulterior motive or are you really just this dumb?” I tell him flatly.

“Okay, well, I know he’s trying to, you know, destroy the BuzzFeed people’s lives but why? What is he gonna get from all of this? In my head, it kinda just goes, ‘ooh idiot that’s been ruining my life let’s kill him and everyone he cares about okay done’.”

I take a few moments to think, slightly stumped by this actually-pretty-viable inquiry. 

“Hm…” I say out loud, “I guess, from the demon’s perspective, it’s just getting rid of all those who wronged him in the past, and a _big_ two of those are Shane and Ryan,” I explain.

He nods and says in a mocking tone, “God. I just don’t understand why these stupid hell-whatevers are always so set on vengeance. It’s kind of annoying.”

I can’t help but laugh at this blatant disregard for every ghost hunter I’ve ever come across, but, really, I could see myself saying something like that before we went into the building for the first time.  
—————  
Eventually, both of us fall asleep, which is pretty impressive actually. I wake up to find the time 7:15 displayed on the blinding light of my phone. 

A few minutes later, Jack wakes up too; and once we’ve both gotten up and somewhat ready for the day, we once again find ourselves having nothing to do. 

The amount of free time we’ve had on this little trip so far is baffling to me, as I once again find myself and Jack sitting in silence, doing nothing but wallow in the irrelevance of our thoughts. However, this time, I simply accept it. The last seventy-two hours have been a pretty wild ride and it’s about damn time we both just get some solitary downtime.

I sit on the sectional for a pretty long time, my only occupation pondering the universe, and the demon has _finally_ been evicted from my train of thought. 

Once my body lets me, I slowly sit up and look around a little. I see Jack, dead asleep, on the chez. To my disappointment, I’m too tired to screw with him; but I _am_ somehow feeling not-shitty enough to get up and grab the laptop out of my backpack. 

It is kinda nice to have the tables turned, I think to myself.

I spend the next half-hour shifting my gaze back and forth between the navy-blue screen and my out-cold brother until he finally wakes up. He seems a little disoriented, as is the norm when waking up from a nap, but he starts to stand up and I can see his eyes roll back a little as he falls to the ground. I jump to my feet, nearly displacing the laptop from my lap, but before I can actually help him up, he’s conscious again and very confused. 

“Woah, woah, easy there, good Christ,” I say, laying a hand on his back.

“Ow, what the _hell_ was that?” he says a little drowsily.

“You’re the former med student here, not me,” I tell him.

He gives me the evil eye, but I just shrug.

“I was just gonna stand up and it felt like someone put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger,” he explains. 

“Sounds like a concussion to me.”

“How would you even know that?”

“Um…’cause I’ve had one before?”

I pause for a minute and when Jack doesn’t respond, I’m shocked.

“You’ve never had a concussion before?” I ask him, and he shakes his head.

 _Things falling into place,_ I mutter mentally.

I offer him a hand and pull him to his feet after making sure he won’t fall again. He seems overall shaken by this disturbance, and to me, the whole thing is a little bit nerve-wracking.

“How are we supposed to help Ryan if I’m _genuinely_ scared half to death and you can barely stand on your own?” I ask.

Jack emits a frustrated sigh.

“I don’t know, but we already kinda committed to it so we’re gonna have to figure out a game plan one way or another,” he says. 

“Well, we’ve got time, so let’s do it.”

I quickly retrieve the notebook and respective pencil from where I’d hurled them to the ground and sit down fairly aggressively at the kitchen table. I’m not exactly sure why I’d need them, but they’re there if I do at any point. 

“I guess there’s not really much to say about this but stick together. That was really the only common denominator between both times we went in there, and it almost cost us _both_ our lives, or sanity, at least,” I comment.

“Agreed, but there’s gotta be more to it than just that,” Jack replies as he approaches the table.

“We’ll have Ryan this time, which makes strength in numbers a viable strategy. And I’m assuming he’ll be adequately armed.”

“Knives were a good idea last time. You might’ve ended up in a lot worse of a situation if you hadn’t had one, so we should bring ‘em again.”

“I know from some shows I’ve watched that salt is usually a good thing to have around demons, too.”

I’m already starting to forget some of the things we rattled off, so I start putting down a list on paper. 

“Anything else?” I ask Jack, not being able to think of anything more myself.

There’s a short pause and he says, “Nothing that isn’t complete bullshit.”

“Cool,” I respond.

Another long and fairly awkward pause.

“So...are we—is that it?” I say slowly.

“I guess,” Jack replies, flopping back down onto the chez.

I slam my notebook closed and slide the pencil into the binding before literally throwing it back into my backpack. 

“Don’t stand up too fast. Again,” I say to Jack. “I’m not gonna have you bailing on me and Ryan.”

Jack just scoffs. 

Trying to ignore him as much as I can, I shove my hands into each of my six pockets, looking for something that’s clearly not there. But when I get to the back left pocket of my jeans, something crunches under my hand. I pull it out to investigate and find that it’s a tiny piece of paper, on which is scribbled a series of numbers in the format of a phone number. Above the line of numbers, Ryan’s name is written fairly small. 

“Hey, Jack,” I say, not taking my eyes off the paper. 

I see his head poke up from behind the back of the couch and I raise the piece of paper, as well as my eyebrows. 

Apparently he can read it, tiny though it is, because he seems surprised.

“So he can reverse pick-pocket. That’s not exactly a good skill to have, but at least now we can talk to him about the game plan without having to go somewhere,” he throws out.

That’s valid, to be honest.

I throw the number in my phone and extremely hesitantly shoot Ryan a text to ask if I could propose our game plan. I know I could’ve called him, but in truth, I still don’t really trust him. To my surprise, he replies within the next five minutes: _Good, you found the tip. I’ll roll with anything. I just need Shane back._

 _Well, that settles that,_ my conscience tells me with a pretty depressed tone.

 _How’s tonight for this whole thing?_ I ask Ryan.

A few seconds later, _The sooner the better._

 _We can go whenever you feel up to it,_ I tell him.

I don’t get a response this time, even after waiting ten whole minutes, and so I say, _What about eleven?_

He responds with a simple but uncharacteristic (at least as far as I could tell), _Sure._

“We’re gonna go around eleven,” I say to Jack, who hasn’t moved an inch from his spot on the chez.

“Wait, you’ve been _texting_ with him?” He says in mild disbelief.

“You got a problem with that, buddy?” I retort harmlessly. 

I see both of Jack’s hands fly up in surrender from where he’s sitting and I emit a sniff of amusement.

“Just a little weird, that’s all,” he says.

“Fair,” I say back. 

“Fair enough,” I continue, just quiet enough that he can’t hear me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Ajay's six pockets = 2 front pants pockets + 2 back pants pockets, 2 _zip-up_ sweatshirt pockets


	13. Cases + Conspiracy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> apparently Grammarly hates latin

It’s a while before either Jack or I actually wanna get up and do anything, but once we do, things start to get interesting.

We agree to try and find somewhere we can get some of the things on our list without seeming too sketchy, which kick-starts a pretty adamant shopping spree. 

There’s one store we stumble upon inside of a relatively small outlet that immediately throws weird vibes our way. Almost all of the walls are painted black, and the best way I can describe the rest of it is as a Patina with a Hot Topic twist. There are a lot of strange things in here, but the thing that catches my eye is a glass case that holds a couple small knives, each with a different design. 

I direct Jack over to my point of interest, and he seems just as intrigued. 

“I’m calling bullshit on a lot of the stuff in here,” he says, “but _this_ stuff looks _cool._ ”

I take a closer look at the switchblades and find that there are inscriptions on the blades, inscriptions I quickly deduce to be Latin phrases. 

“Jack, look at _these!_ ” I say.

He looks over my shoulder and I show him the Latin on each of the blades. 

“Anyone who watches shows that involve demons would know that Latin is the biggest defense against them. Our knives did nothing against Shane’s demon but I’d bet on my _life_ that these would do at least _some_ damage.”

“Yeah, and not to mention, they’re hella cool,” Jack comments.

With Jack’s confirmation, I have never been more ready to blow my bank account on something more obscure. 

We walk up to the counter and upon asking the girl up there (who, I should mention, is no older than I am) to unlock the case holding the knives, she gives me a weird look. 

“So...what are these for?” She asks, clearly a tiny bit suspicious. 

I hesitate a couple seconds after having to keep Jack quiet, but eventually say, “I just think they’re kinda cool.” 

She just nods and unlocks the case for us. After several minutes of admiration and consultation of each other, I choose one with a red and black handle, and Jack picks one with a tiger’s eye handle. Satisfied with our findings, we finally move on. 

To be completely honest, leaving that store makes me feel a lot more comfortable. Not to mention, I can tell the girl who unlocked the case for us had been much more suspicious than she should’ve been (explaining the whole truth would’ve gotten us laughed at a _lot_ ).

We start heading back to the apartment, stopping at another few stores just for the fun of it. On the way from the last store we check out, I notice an all-too-familiar figure sitting on a bench outside one of the stores, hood up and hands in pockets. His face isn’t entirely clear, but I can tell he definitely has something on his mind. I want to go talk to him a little more about our plan, as well as point him out to Jack, but I decide not to. 

_He’s probably just working himself up to tonight,_ I tell myself. _I can imagine it’s gonna be pretty damn hard for him to have to even think about fighting his friend like this._

We pass him up, and I add, _He needs time that I’m willing to give him._  
—————  
We get back and I right away start pacing back and forth behind the sectional. I’m nervous for the next and hopefully final part of this crazy trip that, in retrospect, was never supposed to go this awry, much less awry at all. But I have Ryan’s trust, and it would be both awkward and just about inhuman to break it. 

Several hours go by, hours that Jack and I spend trying to keep our thoughts away from the building, the demon, even Ryan. For now, it’s the last time we’ll have some real peace, at least for a while. 

Suddenly, my phone buzzes in my pocket. I take it out and glance at the screen to find that Ryan had sent me a message: _How are you guys doing so far?_

_We got some pretty cool knives that have Latin on the blades,_ I shoot back, following a request to meet up somewhere. 

_We’re gonna need some other ideas,_ I tell him. 

_Well,_ he responds, _I always used to take Holy Water into the places that had reports of demons; I wouldn’t be above doing that._

Jack sees that text and immediately bursts out laughing. 

“What?” I ask him with a smile, his sudden joy quickly becoming contagious. 

“He ain’t lyin’. There was one episode of _Unsolved_ that he and Shane did at the Old Alton Bridge where he brought a water gun filled with Holy Water,” he explains.

Now _I’m_ laughing. 

“Damn, if only you’d done that on one of _our_ expeditions,” I tell him, and he gives me a look of mock regret.

Once we’re both done laughing our asses off, I shoot another text at Ryan: _Anything you think would help will probably be useful._

He gives me a virtual thumbs-up, and Jack and I head back to the apartment. 

The rest of the day is filled with a lot more exploring the city; and this includes several drive-bys of the BuzzFeed building (which is entirely my idea—thanks, paranoia). There isn’t as much to see here than in, say, San Francisco, but there’s enough to keep us thoroughly entertained for the next eight hours or so ( _amazing,_ I know). 

We make an uneventful return to the apartment, and I ask Ryan how he’s doing. Just like I’d thought earlier, he tells me he’s getting a little existential over the fact that he’s literally going to have to _fight_ Shane to get him back from the demon. I offer up the idea of me and Jack meeting him somewhere for dinner and to get his mind off of the ordeal for a while. He agrees and I propose Alleycat’s to both him and Jack. Jack agrees right off the bat, saying that the food there was to die for. I know that we _already went there,_ and hilariously, the reason for my tossing up of that idea was because I don’t know shit about any of the other restaurants in the city, and I’m not really in the mood to try something new.

So with no other plans (namely “sightseeing”), we head over to the restaurant to find that Ryan isn’t there yet. Regardless, we hold down a table until he gets there about ten minutes later.

“Sorry I’m late,” he tells us, seating himself across the table; but we get nothing more than that, prompting a lot of curiosity. 

Jack seems to let go of the cat-killer quickly, but Ryan’s ever-present sketchy vibe gets in the way of me doing the same. 

This dining session lasts quite a while longer than the one before; Jack tries chatting Ryan up about an episode of _Unsolved: True Crime,_ one that I’d actually seen some of: the case of the Watcher. Surprisingly, Ryan takes the bait and runs with it, so to speak, launching into a pretty ecstatic explanation that immediately exposes his infatuation with the case. 

“It’s just weird to think about both theories being equally possible,” he says, eyes lighting up, “like, the Broadduses could have very easily made the whole thing up, but what about Maria getting PTSD? That’s kinda where that theory went cold for me.”

Looking at us with eyes now brighter than the city at night, he adds, “What did you guys think about it?”

“Yeah, I agree with you about the Broadduses not making it up. There’s _no way_ someone could give themself PTSD,” Jack remarks, but I decide to take the opposite stance.

“But they could be faking it. You never know, maybe they were just good enough at acting to get people to believe them.”

“That’s true,” Jack says, “but how would that explain the letter sent to the house’s old residents?”

This conversation goes on for a while, but eventually, it starts to simmer down and by about eight, Jack and I are on our way back to the apartment to ready for yet another night of fear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) LATIN ON THE BLADES:  
> Ajay's: _terminas--hic tu non potestatem_ (you are bound--you have no power here)  
> Jack's: _non vincerant potestatem inferorum_ (no power of hell can conquer)


	14. Threats + A Third

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hey we back

The second me and Jack step out of the apartment to head towards the BuzzFeed building once more, I’m instantly questioning my sanity again; and honestly, it probably wouldn’t be human for Jack not to feel the same. But I shake the feeling off and keep walking.

That’s really all I can do, right? 

Ryan is waiting outside the razor-wire barrier in front of the building when we get there, and he doesn’t even bother to shift his gaze from it as we approach. 

Jack throws a quick glance at me before turning back to Ryan and saying, “Do you think you’re ready for this?”

Without turning to face him, or even giving him a side-eye, Ryan responds, “It’s about damn time this demon learns that I was the wrong ghost hunter to mess with.”

 _Valid,_ my mind tells me immediately.

So finally, all three of us step up to face the music for hopefully the last time.

The inside of the building has that heavy feeling to it like it did before, but it’s _so_ heavy this time, that I can’t think about _anything_ that’s not negative. 

_Ugh,_ I mutter mentally.

We make it all the way up to that fourth floor again, and it’s still as prim and proper as we’d seen it last time. But when Ryan sees it, he shudders.

“Why the hell is this floor _untouched?_ ” He asks me and Jack quietly.

“I have no idea,” I respond, and Jack agrees.

We keep moving, trying as best we can not to be completely terrified, but that gets hard when we see Shane’s tall figure standing in the stairwell door.

“Son of a bitch…” Ryan whispers tremulously. “I _hate_ this.”

 _And we don’t?_ I retort mentally.

“Why are you here?” Ryan calls out. And to the surprise of all three of us, there’s a loud growl that’s followed by a voice deeper and creepier than any I’ve ever heard in my life.

“It’s truly strange that you don’t know.”

Ryan’s eyes are wide and glazed over in fear when I look over at him, so I take the wheel.

“We’re not running this time!”

There’s a low, bone-chilling chuckle that makes all three of us shiver.

“Foolish,” the deep voice responds.

“What do we do?” Jack whispers to Ryan, who’s still frozen in fear.

“I—I don’t know,” Ryan replies. “Dammit, I never wanted to do this…”

“He’s your friend, you _have_ to,” Jack tells him like he’s the angel on Ryan’s shoulder.

Ryan looks over at him for a little longer than I think Jack would’ve liked before turning to me and doing the same thing. Despite the darkness, I see his expression suddenly brighten. He then turns to the dark figure standing at the end of the hallway and stands up a little straighter.

 _Glad I have company this time,_ I can hear him thinking.

“You can’t keep Shane anymore. He—he’s my friend...and I _want. Him. Back,_ ” Ryan hisses, terrified; and in the dark, I can see him white-knuckling a small vial of Holy Water. 

The demon growled again, and Ryan stands there whispering, “ _Be brave, Ryan, be brave, be brave, be brave. You can do this. You need him back. You got this. Be brave._ ”

Without warning, the demon charges at us way faster than any one of us could’ve imagined. We barely have time to react before he gets to us, so we just scatter.

 _Every man for himself,_ I think, ducking into a doorway just around a corner.

I wait there, plastered to the wall; and that’s when I hear Ryan yelling. It’s not a yell of fear or courage, but it is a yell of terror-driven determination; like a battle cry almost. I start to think that he’s dead once his voice stops resonating throughout the empty building.

 _So much for that,_ the tiny devil on my shoulder says to me. _Don’t dance with the devil if you don’t wanna be set on fire._

I slip out of the doorway and hustle down corridors and other small areas that make up this fourth floor, searching for the former ghost hunter, or whatever’s left of him. Out of the blue, another shout rips through the silence, and this time, I can make out a word, a terrified, pained word. 

“ _NO!_ ”

I quicken my search and find a bloodied Ryan pinned against a wall and clawing at his own throat. But there’s no one doing the deed. I whirl around and find the demon a little ways away, holding a hand slightly out in front of him and approaching _me_ fast. I think just as fast as he’s moving and slide under a desk until he passes me by, seemingly only paying attention to Ryan. As I watch his feet tread past me, I slip out from underneath the desk and slice my Latin-covered blade across the back of his legs. He emits an enraged snarl, and I hear a noise like a short-lived sparkler when my blade makes contact. The demon spins around, looking for whatever hit him. 

I roll under another desk, waiting for a second chance to strike; as I do, I look over and see Ryan sitting against the wall with his head on his chest and both hands at his throat.

 _Good, the damn demon let him go,_ I think, relieved. _You could say that’s a win; a small, irrelevant win..._

I hear the demon storm out of the open-space workroom and rush over to Ryan to make sure he’s okay. 

“Hey!” I whisper. “What happened?”

By now I can see that he’s clearly _not_ okay. His face is covered in scratches, and one of his shoulders is completely torn up, too.

“He was choking me...but he was at _least_ twenty feet away. I’ve never..I’ve never heard of a demon _doing_ that to someone before...” he replies softly.

“Well, everything you thought you knew about demons before is bullshit now,” I tell him. I don’t mean to sound like an insensitive asshole, but it’s the truth.

I pull him to his feet and we split up again; why I don’t know. But I keep searching for the demon in the hopes that I might get another chance to launch an attack. I take my flashlight out of my pocket and shine it down the dark hallway in front of me. I glance down quickly and discover blood on the floor; not a lot, but enough for my subconscious to kick its chair back. 

_Jack,_ is my first and only thought.

I run around frantically when again, I hear a yell resonate through the workspace. Well, this time, it’s not a yell—it’s a scream, and it’s Jack’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) CUTS PT. 1: the piece I wanted to add here was this:  
>  _"My plan was never to present myself, it was to bring a long-awaited peace to all the souls you so recklessly disturbed, to get close enough to eliminate you; and when you came within my reach, I knew that chance was there for the taking."_


	15. Satisfaction + A Savior

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I may or may not have taken Latin for four years  
> I did both the Latin exorcisms and the translations but I know I did sm wrong like I know my own damn name so

I don’t think I’ve ever run faster in my life. I slide around corners nearly slam into walls running around looking for my brother. I open my mouth to shout his name, but before I can, I hear his voice again.

“ _No, no, NO, WAIT!_ ”

The sickening crash that follows makes my heat sink down to the soles of my shoes.

“ _SHIT!_ ” I hear, immediately following up with my own shout of, “JACK!”

I continue sprinting around, nearly skidding into doorways until I hear a hushed version of Jack’s former shouting hiss, “Fuckin’ _hellface!_ ”

Some twisted part of me wants to laugh at the irritation and blatant insult in his voice.

I find him a few seconds later on the third-floor landing, lying in a ball on his side and whimpering quietly. I’m at his side in a flash and he right away looks up at me.

“He threw me down the damn stairs again,” he tells me, shaking, “like it was fucking _nothing._ ”

It’s then that I notice that his right arm is positioned weirdly under him.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“No. I’m not fucking okay. The fucking idiot broke my arm.” He sounds like he’s getting ready to cry.

He glares daggers at me when I ask him if I can look, so I move on.

“No insensitivity meant,” I begin, “but we’ve _gotta_ help Ryan. He’s still in here somewhere and I just _hope_ he’s not dead.”

I carefully help Jack to his feet and we begin a determined search for Ryan. As we enter the all-too-neat workplace yet again, we both see a scene that’s more epic than _any_ video game cut.

Ryan is standing in the center, staring the demon on the far side, dead in the eye. I blink a few times, and he suddenly starts muttering something unintelligible. 

Unintelligible, but only at first. As his tone grows in volume, I catch not only the rising intensity but the words he’s speaking. 

“ _Potestas inferiorum adjuvant vivum non vincet!_ ” he says in a mere hiss. I recognize the dead language right off the bat.

“ _No power of hell can conquer those still living,_ ” I whisper, half to Jack and half to myself. “An exorcism?”

Ryan continues to growl Latin curses as me and Jack just stand by in terror, until the demon has finally had enough. He charges at Ryan and sends the former ghost hunter flying into a wall nearly thirty feet away. He falls to the floor limply and immediately, I move to help him. But Jack grabs my arm with an iron grip.

“You can’t do this, you’re gonna get hurt,” he says, his eyes full of concern.

“I _won’t_ let Ryan do this alone,” I mutter and wrench myself free. 

I know he’s just worried about me, but my veins are coursing with adrenaline and I’m not gonna waste it on watching Ryan get killed by the demon. 

_I PROMISED I’d help him, and have no damn intention of letting him down,_ I continue in my head, nearly seething in irritation.

I run over to Ryan who seems to be slowly coming to. Hitting the wall must’ve knocked him out for a minute or two.

“Come on, you _have_ to get up!” I urge him frantically. But my efforts are completely fruitless; he’s too shocked.

But suddenly, he looks up at me and his eyes widen in fear. That’s when I notice his eyes are looking slightly beyond me and not at me.

I slowly turn around and see the demon standing over us, black eyes glazed over in sheer anger.

“What are you gonna get out of killing him?” I growl more tremulously than ever. “What’s your plan?”

The demon glares at me. I can see now that he’s got several cuts on his face, presumably from Ryan; and when I subconsciously glance down, I see that the lower half of both his legs are soaked in blood. My dealings did _nothing_ to slow him down, and now I’m more horrified than any other time I’d been in the damn building.

"My plan was never to _present_ myself, it was to bring a long-awaited peace to all of my kind that you so recklessly disturbed, to get close enough to _eliminate_ you; and when you came within my reach, I knew that chance was _there_ for the _taking._ "

I look back at Ryan; after all, the demon’s addressing him, not me.

“You asked him to give it everything he had, and when he did, I knew it was my time,” the demon continued.

Ryan looks confused at first but then comes to a jarring realization.

“The chair room…” he murmurs. “You’re from the goddamn _chair room._ ”

The demon only chuckles. 

Jack had forced me to watch a few episodes of Unsolved: Supernatural before we met Ryan to get a feel for what we were getting into when we went in the second time, and Ohio State Penitentiary had been one of the ones I’d watched. As I sat there, frantically trying to come up with a game plan, everything began to fall into place.

 _Of course Shane’s possessor would be the one he was most cavalier in the face of,_ I consider.

But before I can do _anything,_ the demon snatches up the front of my sweatshirt and whips me across the room like I’m light as a feather. I clip a table during my short flight, and pain flares up and down my leg so badly that I can’t do anything but cry out as I hit the floor. I watch with blurred vision as the demon storms over to Ryan again and attempt to get up and help him.

 _You said you wouldn’t let him go it ALONE!_ My mind screams at me.

But when I try to slide my legs under me to get to my feet, pain once again rockets down my left leg and I fall back to the floor while gritting my teeth.

Just a few minutes later, I hear Ryan muttering again; as his voice raises in aggression and volume, I hear that it’s Latin. By now, the demon has thrown himself to the floor and is writhing like an unholy snake.

“ _Potestas inferiorum adjuvant vivum non vincet; a Deo potestate ad venis an ubi reverteres et reverteres numquam!_ ”

 _No power of hell can conquer those still living; by the power of God, you shall go back to where you came from and never return,_ my mind translates hazily.

He repeats the phrase over and over until suddenly, the entire building goes silent. I hear Ryan drop to the floor and that oppressive, negative feel that the building had been clouded in for so long just lifts like fog. Ryan emits a long, heavy sigh.

“It’s _over…_ ” I hear him whispering, “I—I _did_ it…”

But his mood changes quickly. 

“Shane!”

I grasp the edge of a desk and painfully drag myself up to my feet to see Ryan kneeling over the body of his friend. Apparently and _miraculously,_ Shane is still alive.

As Ryan takes a few minutes to calm himself down, Jack races over to me.

“Ajay, please tell me you're okay,” he says in a shaky but hushed voice.

“He—the demon threw me and I clipped a table. I don’t think I can walk,” I tell him.

In response, he situates his uninjured arm firmly around my shoulders and we make our way over to Ryan together.

“Is he gonna be okay?” I ask, nodding gently towards Shane, lying face-up on the ground.

“I...I don’t know. He needs help _fast,_ ” Ryan replies; he’s shaking like a leaf.

Jack sits me down in a nearby swivel chair and pulls his phone out of his pocket to call for help. I’d tried to tell him that no one was gonna come anywhere near the building, but he wouldn’t listen to me.

 _Shane’s gonna die; he’s gonna bleed out on that floor and we’re ALL gonna look guilty,_ I mutter mentally. _No one ever believes shit about ghosts or demons so why would this time be any different? Pinning Shane’s death on us would be as easy as us just handing over a hypothetical murder weapon and pleading guilty._

I sigh audibly, and I hear Jack shout, “I don’t care how much you don’t want to come here! If this guy dies, you’ll be part of the...the _conspiracy!_ ”

He aggressively hangs up without another word and shoves the phone back into his pocket with a huff.

“We’re gonna be accused of fucking murder.”


	16. Patience + A Plot Twist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ayyyyyy we did it  
> I'm _genuinely_ sorry this took so longggg

Jack practically drags my ass back to his aunt’s apartment as soon as we’re both released from the hospital a few days later and right away flops onto the bed, saying, “We’re stuck here now. I’m not driving one-handed, and you’d probably run us off the road; _neither_ of us can drive like that.”

 _Rude,_ I think, but he’s right.

When the demon threw him down the stairs, he’d landed _way_ too hard on his left arm, and it turned out that it had been broken in _two_ places instead of just one. As for me, the collision with the table had completely destroyed the inner workings of my right knee; it was cracked in several different places and it was so painful that I couldn’t even put a half-pound of pressure on it.

“Why not call your aunt? Maybe she’ll let us stay a little longer,” I suggest. But other than that, I have no ideas.

Jack glares at me. 

“And tell her what? ‘Oh, well, you see, we were hiking and _both_ fell off a cliff.’”

I burst out laughing, but it’s only partially from joy; Jack gives me another cold look.

“Seriously?” He says. There’s no trace of any positive emotion on his face.

“Well, calling her is better than doing nothing and having to explain it later, when she’s more suspicious,” I remark.

Jack gives me an “I know you’re right but I hate that you’re right” kind of look.

He heads out into the small hallway of the complex with his phone and returns a minute or so later.

“I guess ‘something came up’ was a sufficient enough reason for her,” he says, looking mildly defeated.

I grin at knowing I’ve won again.

“I guess it’s finally time to get back to school work then,” I say.

“Dude, we just got done with a week-long mission to try and save a guy from being killed by demonic possession and both nearly died ourselves. I think we can forget about schoolwork for a while,” Jack says snidely; and I guess I can agree.

“True,” I say. “Netflix, then?”

The expression on Jack’s face immediately changes from passive-aggressive to sheer mischievous joy; the usual, as I say.

“Netflix,” he replies, jumping up to come join me on the couch as he flips the TV on.

The next few hours are filled with a combo of _Iron Fist_ and _Good Omens_ alongside the long-awaited feeling of closure we’d both received from successfully helping Ryan get his friend back.

At one point during a rather boring monologue scene, I ask Jack, “How do you think Ryan’s doing? You think he’s okay?”

“I don’t know,” Jack replies. “He seemed so _scared_ when he saw Shane just lying there. That _has_ to have ruined him mentally.”

“Yeah...maybe we should give it a few days before we talk to him again. He needs some serious downtime.”

Jack nods at my idea and we return to binging shit until eleven at night.

When we both finally decide to go to bed, it’s easier than ever.

 _Man,_ I think to myself as I slide under a blanket on the couch, _I don’t think I’ve ever felt so relieved by closure ever. Or received this much before._  
—————  
I feel horrible when I wake up the next morning, knowing I can’t go anywhere. I force upon my mind the realization that I’m not going to be able to do much for a while. And to make things worse, the day drags on horribly slowly and painfully as Jack and I try to come up with things to fill the time.

Spoiler alert: it’s damn near _impossible._

But towards the end of the suffering, at somewhere close to seven, maybe, I find myself sitting at the kitchen island while Jack dozes on the couch. Suddenly, my phone buzzes, and I jump. But upon investigating, I discover it’s a text from Ryan. I’m surprised but open it anyway.

 _Hey,_ I read mentally, _are you guys okay? You were both pretty beaten up…_

“True,” I mutter to myself as I go to respond.

_Yeah...to an extent…What about you?_

I can almost hear Ryan sigh. It’s a few minutes before he says anything else, but he eventually replies, _I’ll be fine. And actually, so will Shane, but I don’t want to talk about it._

A few seconds later, _Would you mind meeting me outside the hospital? There’s a few things I want to say to you guys before you head home._

I throw a lazy glance over at Jack, who’s still sound asleep, and make up his mind for him alongside making up my own.

 _Of course._

Long story short, we wind up planning the “meeting” for the next afternoon, and I’m a little pissed it couldn’t have been sooner.

 _We have nothing to do!_ My mind yells at me. _What the hell are we supposed to do for however many hours before we leave?_

I don’t have an answer, so I turn to Jack once he wakes up. Frustratingly, it just ends up going back to what we’d been doing before: thinking about it and failing miserably. But somehow, _somehow,_ we pull through, filling our waking time with as much as we can before going to sleep that night and waking the next morning with three hours to kill. I decide to read for a little while, seating myself carefully at the kitchen table and opening the novel I’d started a few days prior. I let the fictitious paragraphs lead my mind into the open and start to space out quickly; when I snap back into reality a half-hour later, I realize that Jack is sitting across the table from me with his laptop, as well as a psychology textbook, open in front of him. 

“I thought you said homework was out of the picture,” I tell him with a grin. 

“Yeah, well,” he replies, “ _I_ was thinking about it as a last resort, and that’s kinda where we’ve landed ourselves.”

“True.”

The silence that follows is almost sad to me. Jack has lost his charisma again, and I don’t know what to say. 

I’ve lived with him for nearly half of my life, and any one of my friends or his would tell me that any silence around Jack is a gift that’s on the top of everyone’s damn wishlist, but here and now, it just feels so _off._

It’s so unnerving to me that I feel like I _have_ to break the silence or I’ll go insane. 

“Do you think things will go back to normal after all this?”

Jack looks up at me for a second before glancing down at the table. He does the same thing again a moment later, this time closing his eyes with a sigh as his head drops. He shuts his laptop and waits a few more seconds before looking up at me. 

“If we’re being honest...I have _no fucking idea,_ ” he says in a hushed tone that’s almost wistful. “ _God,_ I hope it does…”

The melancholy air surrounding the two of us keeps me from saying anything, so I bury my face back in my book. But before long, there’s a knock at the apartment door. 

“Who the _fuck_ is that?” I say, immediately jumping to the conclusion that Jack lied to me when he said he got the green light from his aunt.

“Guess we’ll find out,” Jack replies as he rushes past me towards the door. 

As he passes me up, he practically drops his hand onto my shoulder and holds it there firmly until he’s gone by; it’s almost like he thought I was going to try and get up. 

I prepare for the wave of awkward that I’m expecting when Jack opens the door, but instead of being another caretaker of the apartment, we’re both shocked to find _Ryan_ standing there. 

“ _What…?_ ” I mutter under my breath; I turn around in my chair and throw a look of sheer confusion in the direction of the open door. 

“What...what are _you_ doing... _here?_ ” Jack asks. 

“Well, I kinda figured you guys weren’t up to meeting up with me, so I figured I’d just come find you,” he replies casually, but there’s a weird sheepishness to his voice.

“How’d you even know where we were staying?” Jack follows up slowly. 

Ryan cocks his head slightly and looks past Jack at me. 

“You brought me here before...remember?” He asks, and suddenly everything’s falling into place for me

“Oh…” Jack says quietly; I can tell he feels a little embarrassed for not remembering. “I guess it just slipped my mind…”

After an uncomfortably long silence (even for me), he invites the former ghost hunter in and offers him the seat he’d been sitting in across the table from me. 

“So…What’s up?” I ask.

“I, um…” he begins, “I just wanted to thank you guys for...for helping me save Shane. God _knows_ I _never_ would’ve done it on my own, and _who knows_ what would’ve happened to him then.”

Ryan pauses for a moment and shifts in his seat.

“This is gonna sound _really_ cheesy and stupid but...you guys kinda made me realize how important it is to have someone else’s back. Maybe if I hadn’t been so scared all those times we went to investigate a location, things would be different.”

Jack and I look at each other with the strangest look, somewhat stunned by this proclamation. But I quickly turn back to Ryan.

“Hey, we just wanted the truth as much as you did; and if that meant having to go in and be beaten to hell by a demon, who cares,” I say with a slight grin.

“How do I pay you guys back? You helped save Shane’s life; there has to be _something_ I can do,” Ryan says almost immediately. 

I think for a while, and Jack does the same. After everything we’ve been through, it seems like all we need is a long-ass break from reality. But, assuming that Ryan won’t take “nothing” for an answer, I dig a little deeper.

The silence that accompanies our thoughts is rather peaceful, which is strange considering the air of the room just minutes beforehand. 

But I know it has to end at some point and apparently, Jack has just the thing to break it.

 _This isn’t over yet,_ my brain tells me when I catch the almost creepy grin on his face. _It never will be._

“Hey...” he says to Ryan, “What about...a ghost hunt or something? Yeah, we just went into a creepy-ass building and fought a _demon_ almost to the death, but I’m still not convinced _ghosts_ are real.”


End file.
